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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.
Played PalWorld a little bit and it didn't really grab me. I think I've played too many survival/crafting games and the draw of it taking inspiration from Pokemon isn't enough to keep me interested.
Have continued playing Let's Go Pikachu with my kids. They've finally figured out movement controls and will play themselves for the most part, although they're still asking me to do battles because "they're boring". Which...offends me. So I've been playing in the evenings after they're in bed to progress the story so they have new areas to catch Pokemon in. Also got the Go Park thing figured out so I could bring a few pokemon over from Pokemon Go. Mostly just wanted to bring a Ditto and Eevee over.
Also been playing Stardew Valley. Nearly got to the 100th floor of the skull cavern today. Made it to level 96 before the day ended automatically. SO CLOSE. But I think I have a good strategy in place to make it to 100 on my next attempt, which will be whenever it's a "lucky" day next.
Ouch, that hurt me as well, lol.
Anything in particular you didn't like about PalWorld?
Yet another gathering/crafting system doesn't really appeal to me right now I guess. And I found the UI and controls to be a bit...meh. I'll more than likely give it another shot down the road. I don't usually give up on games for good until I've put more than a few hours into them.
For stardewvalley, if you and afford it, bring loads to stone to craft stairs if you're very close and just need to push a bit further. Also teleport home right if possible. I never made it anywhere near as far myself :)
I made it to level 100 during my lunch break! My strategy was basically to just avoid all ores and enemies and just mine out every stone until a hole or ladder appeared. I used stone stairs to skip swarm levels (where you have to fight x amount of an enemy to make ladder appear), and some Spicy Eel for extra luck. I finished up with a few in-game hours to spare, so I mined Iridium for a bit because by the time you get to level 100, every level has 2-3 (or more) nodes you can mine.
Nicely done! :D that's a good tip to just skip swarm levels.
Finished Alan Wake 2, what a beautiful game. Right length, right difficulty, just a pleasure to play through. I really liked how the two characters were designed differently in every way even though the gameplay core was the same.
Story wise I thought it's definitely up there but the meta-ness of Remedy-verse kinda gets in the way. There can be ambiguity but here the ties to the bigger universe make this feel like a chapter in a book rather than the whole book. Still, I highly recommend.
That's funny, I actually thought the tie in helps ground the game in reality and helped me enjoy the story more than the first game. If you didn't play Control then I do agree it doesn't do enough to help you understand what the Bureau of Control is or does. The first Alan Wake, the dark presence was just kind of nonsense. I like that it could be explained as an AWE in Cauldron lake.
Either way, agreed that the game was exceptionally executed and I really enjoyed it.
It might be just me being tired of these universes that never have an ending because there's always something they're building towards to. But let's see if the upcoming DLCs provide that satisfactory ending maybe it'll be a better recommend after that (since at least couple loose ends come to mind, though I don't think they'll get a perfect bow even in the DLC because those loose ends seem partly to tie in the center of the whole Remedy-verse).
And I loved Control too, I have a hard time deciding which one I like better but AW2 is more cohesive overall experience (story, gameplay, design -- it all mixes in together and supports the other parts expertly). At least that's how I feel now but maybe that's just recency bias.
It would be nice if the DLC tied things up more but I'm not sure they even know how or should. To your point, even if they are not trying to keep the Remedy-verse going it keeps the possibility of a AL3 I guess.
And I agree. The action is obviously better in Control and the premise is cool and whacky, but AL2 is a really great story with some legitimately creepy parts and I enjoyed most of the mechanics.
Trails of the Sky First Chapter
I had a couple weeks of break for the winter holidays and wanted to spend some of it playing a JRPG. I ended up falling into the Trails series... and just wow. I picked up the first entry and binged a 40hr playthrough in an embarassingly short number of days.
I don't usually look for good storytelling in videogames. Give me engaging gameplay, nice graphics, and a story that doesn't get in the way of the former, and I'm happy. So color me surprised that the writing and storytelling stole the show.
I'd consumed a couple reviews that warned that the story was slow. And that's totally true. You spend the first 10 hours doing menial tasks. You don't actually know who the game's central antagonist is until most of the way through the game. But I loved the game for it. That slowness creates space that the game uses to build a world that didn't feel like it revolved around the main characters. Other events are happening in the world as you go on your journey, and there are opportunities/quests that come and go. Characters both in and especially outside your immediate party have their own lives and concerns, which evolve as you move through the story. This game made it really easy to suspend my disbelief, and just give in to the story it was telling.
The care the game has for its characters felt especially strong for the two main leads. They are so expressive of their very different personalities, and the pacing lets them show off their strengths and grapple with their insecurities in a way that I found very affecting. A characterization I couldn't help but contrast against the 2 leads of Sea of Stars, the last JRPG I started and unfortunately quickly dropped, who are never much more than vehicles for exposition.
Trails of the Sky FC is surprisingly funny too! The jokes landed consistently for me, even in some of the more ridiculous situations (*coughOliviercough*). One of my favorite things to do in this game is to click on already-looted chests, which seem to each have a unique line/joke berating you for wanting more.
The storytelling was the cherry on a solid gameplay foundation. It's a turn-based JRPG with a battle system that emphasizes the importance of turn order and positioning. This coupled with the equipment system gave me the sense of progression that I usually look for in games like this and kept me engaged. Though it wasn't without its share of gripes:
Outside of battle, the rest of the game felt really frictionless:
The graphics were the weakest part of the package. It's a 20 year old game; the textures, backgrounds, and video cutscenes look rough. But the rest of the package was so charming that you just get used to it, and I came to appreciate parts of the art direction. They invested so much into their sprite work, and there are a bunch of scene specific animations. And the drawn character portraits that show up during dialogue manage to convey so much despite not being animated.
God there's probably a million other good things I could say about this game. I really appreciated that you never walk into someone's house in this game, and just loot their stuff. I really appreciated how the architecture of many buildings and homes made them feel like places people actually spent time in. And I was a big fan of the game's uses of its battle system in some scripted moments as a plot device.
I really enjoyed this. The gameplay and the story felt respectful of my time, rewarded me for engaging what I was interested in and let me breeze through what I didn't.
I'm am scared of what this series will going to do to my wallet. The cliffhanger in Trails of the Sky FC was so strong I immediately bought the sequel, and I'd bet that I'll just want to keep going further.
It took me so long to write the parent comment that I actually ended up playing through and finishing the sequel, Trails in the Sky Second Chapter, too.
It very much is a "Second Chapter". The story happens on the same map, with largely the same cast. The gameplay is identical save for a few new additions. I'd expect that there's very little chance that someone who liked Trails in the Sky FC wouldn't like Trails in the Sky SC.
Played Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion and the recently released sequel, Turnip Boy Robs a Bank. Very different and very short games, but thoroughly enjoyable, especially if you spend too much time on the internet and get most of the internet culture jokes and memes that the games are absolutely packed with. Commits Tax Evasion plays like a classic 2D RPG, while Robs a Bank plays like a top-down shooter, think Hotline Miami or Enter the Gungeon. If you had to choose between the two (which you probably don't have to, the games are tiny and also on sale right now until the 25th), I would recommend Robs a Bank. It fixes many of the issues the first game had, has a better gameplay loop overall, and lasts twice as long, which still isn't very long considering I 100%'d it in 6 hours, but those were some really good 6 hours. Surprisingly good music as well.
I was very much enjoying Commits Tax Evasion until that one boss
Oh yeah that one got dark real fast. You don't need to worry about anything that serious in Robs a Bank, it has some minor emotional moments but nothing close to that one.
Oh awesome ~ does it go back to being silly vegetables after that one point in the first game?
Pretty much, though you don't have to subject yourself to it again if you just want to get caught up on the story for the second game - they give you a synopsis right at the start if you say you haven't played the first one.
I finally picked up Risk of Rain 2. I'm a long time fan of the first Risk of Rain, so I'm not exactly sure why it took me so long to get 2. I think from some trailers I had the impression that the environments were bland and the gameplay looked a bit boring. I will say that I was very wrong and that the game is much better when you're the one controlling your character over watching gameplay. I'm honestly hopelessly addicted to it, it has some of the smoothest and most satisfying gameplay I've had in any game, much less an inexpensive indie game. I'm going to put a loooot of time into this, which is good, because I've really been needing a "time waster" comfort game that I can play if I don't want to try something new (CoD use to be that for me, but I uninstalled finally, I've just had it with that franchise).
I'm still working my way through Disco Elysium. It's funny and has some great moments, but I'm honestly not that enthralled with the moment to moment gameplay. I will finish it eventually, but it's a game where I can really only play a couple hours a week before bouncing off. I'll get through it, but it will be a few more weeks, I think.
Besides that, practicing for the 24 hours of Daytona in iRacing has dominated my gaming time, but now that that's over, I have some free time. I'm thinking about starting Alan Wake or Control next, but I really need to finish Ghost of Tsuhima at some point, so maybe I'll push through that in the next two weeks. Because of the episodic nature of the game, I've been pretty comfortable just playing a few hours a week and having a slow burn, though.
Also, with me having watched most of AGDQ last week, I now have at least a dozen more games on my wishlist. The one that most interested me was Sprawl. The movement was just mind bending, I really want to learn to shotgun jump like Bloodthunder can. Video for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh5TgV86B0k
On the subject of AGDQ, wow was this so much smoother than any other event they've ever done. Having dual setups + a baked in hour of "whatever" time each day on the schedule, it actually stayed on time for the first time potentially ever? I was at SGDQ 2023 and I remember being extremely salty because I wanted to stay through the finale, but it was originally scheduled for 10pm or something and ended up being 6am because of delays earlier in the week. I had to go home at about 2am because I physically could not stay awake, even in a loud crowd. I'm glad they figured their shit out this time, it was the most pleasant event to watch in a long time (less downtime, great games, no drama, fewer ridiculous incentives and bonus game incentives to meet, hosts being less pushy about donations, etc.).
Now, on to some board games! Until recently, I didn't have a great setup at home to host people and I also live alone, so I didn't really have any board games, even though I love going to my sister's to play. I'm finally set up now and I picked up three new games that support solo play as well as multiplayer: Sanctum, One Deck Dungeon, and Tiny Epic Galaxies.
Sanctum is diablo, but a board game, basically. You have a character with skills that you unlock, you kill demons and loot them for gear, etc. It's pretty materials heavy and was a bit daunting when coming out of the box, but the gameplay is honestly pretty simple once you get a few turns in. I do wish there was either more of a co-op or more of a competitive element. It ended up more or less being three of us playing a solo board game at the same time. There are a few competitive elements in how demons are fought and looted, but it's moreso just in denial of resources, but you're usually just going to pick what's best for you and not spend a precious turn denying another player what they need. I did have fun and do want to play again, but I think the game could have been great, and not just good, if there was more co-op or more competitiveness, it's just kind of in a weird spot between that.
One Deck Dungeon and Tiny Epic Galaxies are both essentially dice matching games. In ODD, you're simulating going through a dungeon, killing monsters, looting them, etc. You roll a dice pool based on your character's stats and try to match the numbers to what each monster requires to kill them. Killing a monster lets you choose how you want to loot them. They can become items (add to your dice pool), experience (so you can level up later), or they can give you skills (which often allow you to reroll dice or change dice to a specific number value). I've only played this one solo, but it's pretty fun if you want a solo game that you can play in 30 minutes.
Tiny Epic Galaxies is a similar vein, where you're rolling dice, but instead of matching to monster cards, the dice let you do things like enact diplomacy on planets, move to new planets, use abilities from your conquered planets, etc. This game, instead of having a deck of monsters to fight or something like that, uses an "AI" as a player for you to fight against. There are multiple difficulty levels, so it's actually set up pretty well. This one can be played with up to five players, so I'm definitely breaking this out at the next board game night.
Another person who's been playing Palworld over the weekend. I've never been huge into Pokemon by any means (the last Pokemon game I played for more than 30 minutes was Pokemon Red ... heh). But I was a big fan of Valheim, so figured with people describing Palworld as "survival/crafting game meets Pokemon" I thought "why not."
And yeah, I think that description of Palworld is quite apt. I think the building right now is quite simplistic overall, compared to say, Valheim. At least in some ways anyway. Haven't played anything like Ark, so cannot compare there. The Pals are neat, though quite obviously Pokemon inspired. That doesn't bug me though.
I really like the character control in this game so far. It feels very close to BotW in a lot of ways, which I think is a good thing. There's even a parachute you can craft, if you needed any proof that BotW is at least part of their inspiration for this game, heh. I'd appreciate the ability to zoom the camera out further though.
What I am worried about so far is that after I captured a flying Pal and crafted a saddle for it and went flying around the world ... I'm starting to get that same sorta feeling I had with BotW after playing it for a while. That the world is looks somewhat empty / devoid-of-meaning. Not a whole ton of interesting landmarks (not to say there aren't any, but it seems a little sparse currently). I might still be wrong and maybe there's a ton more to come, as I'm "only" 10 hours play-time in so far.
Anyway, the game is early access, so who knows. Maybe it's something I play for a couple weeks or so until I get to the end, and then pick up again in a years time when there's more content added. If so, I'd still be happy and consider it well worth my $35 CAD.
Video Game: I aged out of chasing the latest thing some time ago, so I've been playing Civ6 a bit recently. I use it as a way to sink some mindless hours into a game on easy mode (easy modes are always appreciated), practically treating it as a sandbox rather than a challenge. 2K games really made the launcher/in-game setup stuff more annoying over the past couple years, I'm not sure why they did that.
Board Game: a while ago my wife saw Parks at a game store and picked it up for some friends who made an effort to visit many of the US National Parks. It turns out Parks is actually a great game (7.7 on BGG), a little bit of engine builder meat but generally light enough that this crew (we are not hardcore gamers) can pick it up and enjoy it readily.
It's simple enough to disable, here are the PCGW instructions for Civ 6.
This is one of the rare instances where a launcher actually does cause significant performance impacts so disabling it is highly recommended in all instances of the launcher being used.
These articles about Marvel Suns because it was the hot new game when this news broke but the fixes were developed over Civ 6 first:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/12/2ks-launcher-can-tank-pc-performance-on-marvels-midnight-suns/
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/no-seriously-you-should-disable-the-2k-launcher-for-marvels-midnight-suns
Thank you for linking this to me! I will give it a try again. I had tried similar instructions but found that all binaries open the launcher, even when specifying the more direct non-launcher binary.
I still have the game installed and configured this way. I tested it to make sure they haven't updated the game to remove this ability. Looks like it still works.
My only advice at this point is to ensure the end of the launch options looks like this in Steam. It's unusual since most games don't require you to specify the binary this way when setting launch options, but bypassing the 2K launcher does.
I've been playing a bit of The Messenger, a somewhat tongue-in-cheek NES-style platformer from the same folks that made Sea of Stars. It's a lot of fun! It's not insanely challenging, but there are some tricky bits if you want to try and get all the secret stuff. The skill merchant is hilarious, I'll never stop trying to eke every last ounce of dialogue out of them that I can. It's delightful to pick up for a quick session on the Steam Deck, and pretty much exactly the break I wanted from the approximately one billion RPGs I have installed on there already that really want you to play a longer session to get anything done.
I've also been continuing to play City of Heroes, but just as I was finalizing the bio on my Professor Elemental knockoff, my keyboard absolutely shat the bed. It had been double-typing a handful of keys for a week or so, but last night it just started spamming a handful of keys within a few inches of the backspace key, and made basically everything impossible to do, so I unplugged it and tossed it into the "I really need to get to the eco centre one of these days" pile. Thankfully, I already ordered a replacement which has shipped, but it isn't expected to arrive until Friday, so I'm pretty much certain I won't be able to really use my home PC until Monday. Ah well, so it goes. More Steam Deck and housework for me then, I suppose.
Thanks for talking about The Messenger. It looks like it's right up my alley, so I picked it up on sale for $5 just now!
I've been playing far too many games, and I need to get some of them off my proverbial plate.
But I recently started playing Shovel Knight, and it's a great little ode to classic NES games. It plays like we all remember them playing, but doesn't actually play like any of those classic games. Modern sensibilities in a retro style.
I've also been juggling Final Fantasy XVI (playing when my wife wishes to watch), Baldur's Gate 3 (when I have more than an hour or so to spare - typically when the rest of the family is asleep), Slay The Spire (when I have a few moments to spare), Pikmin 4 (when the kids are around; they enjoy it) ...
Man, Shovel Knight is IMO one of the all-time-great Indie games.
Especially insane when you look at how they added so much content for free for so many years.
Can't wait for Yacht Club's next game! I already backed it on Kickstarter.
Shovel Knight is so cool, I love how much love and attention to detail went into it! There's a huge database of cheat codes people have been finding, it's awesome
Shovel Knight is perfect! I also recommend The Messenger. Similar style, but with a Ninja.
Like a few others, I picked up Palworld over the weekend. I really like it so far, it seems like a fun blend of automation and survival, and while I like automation games, I'm not good at them, and I tend to not like survival games that have to much to focus on, so this seems like a nice compromise.
Aside from that I've been playing Endless Sky, because you can run it on a potato and I'm a huge fan of being a space trucker. The only downside is I like to play with mods, and it's annoying to try and remember what mods I have installed on which device, so I have like 4 pilots at any given time.
This weekend was pretty low key so I got some game time in. Grabbing a PS5 with Playstation + has been a game changer. My partner end up sitting together and she now and then take the controller for a bit. But it's nice to have the ability for her to be involved a bit with this hobby.
Really like the game streaming. I can hop into a game quickly. Figure out if I like it enough to wait for the full download. Lowers the commitment barrier than usually pevents me from trying out games.
Have you tried Brotato? If you like Vampire Survivors, you might like it as well. I enjoy both but something about Brotato's menus and ui feel a bit clearer for me, so I end up returning to that one more often.
All Kaps when you spell Mortal Kombat's name. As a genre, fighting games aren't a big fan of traditional spelling. Mortal Kombat, Soul Calibur, and Samurai Shodown.
Glad you had fun though.
I liked Spiritfarer for the first handful of hours, but started to feel like it was a bit of a chore simulator at some point. Never ended up finishing it unfortunately, but the graphics and characters and colours were all SO comfy and lovely! I might try it out again, you totally just reminded me of its existence!
I can see that, I usually fall off on games like Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing etc. for that precise reason. I likely won't finish this game (unsure of expected run time), but I'm enjoying my time with it for the moment!
I have been playing Another Code and it's been a pretty fun game, I only played an hour or so from the DS game but they managed to make it alot like Life is Strange which is a game I really liked, the OST also has been a surprising hit for me
I finished Last Window - Secret of Cape West a few days ago and loved it to pieces. Took me about 15 hours from start to finish and my only real frustration was a conversation toward the end with multiple failure points, prompting you to start from the beginning again. Bit of a time waste, but not bad overall. I think this one was much better overall than Hotel Dusk.
Just got emulation (Cemu) up and running on my Steam Deck and started playing Breath of the Wild for the first time and I'm very much having a great time with it. I'm not a huge Zelda fan, though I've played to completion about half a dozen entries in the series and I absolutely love how freeform this one is. I'm very much an explorer type player, so I love that I get to just kind of explore at my leisure and tackle challenges in the way I see fit. Recently got to the shrine in a village where you basically need to do one of those ball in the maze puzzles and jump the ball at the end over a gap; well, I kept failing and getting frustrated, but ultimately got the ball to the gap and stopped it there. Jumped over to the maze itself and then bombed the ball so it would jump over it and my solution worked great. Was very happy that the game allows me to do that.
Also jumped back into Command & Conquer Remastered. I put well over 100-hours into it when it first came out and then put it down, but now I'm back and having a great time with Skirmish and not forcing myself to finish the expansion pack missions, which I just don't find very fun. I must have put hundreds of hours into this game when I got it as a 12-year old back on Christmas in 1996 and I still love it to absolute pieces. Sure beating the AI is pretty easy, but there's something comforting about being able to just fall back on a particular strategy to win a Skirmish map. It's like settling into a cozy blanket and relaxing.
I've played 40 hours of Palworld this week. Its very fun and addicting with friends, but the bugs and unfinished edges of the game make it a tough pill to swallow if you aren't into the core gameplay loop. "Pokemon with guns" is not really accurate and definitely not a good selling point since you don't even get guns until dozens of hours into the game. This is very much an Ark clone, though it does the "capture creatures and make them work for you" way better, while also having the advantage of not running awfully on most computers.
Overall it feels like both a lot of thought, and very little effort went into the game. The AI of the Pals and enemies are laughably bad, they get stuck on geometry so often it feels like a 5th grade math classroom. Lots of bare/unfinished areas, movement feels ok in some places and terrible in others. The server netcode is absolutely unplayable at times, we have 10 people playing on one server with hourly restarts and the game still rubberbands like the vegetable department at walmart, and often crashes for some players.
Despite all of this, we're still enjoying the game and exploring the map. I don't see myself replaying it after we're done though, this feels very much like a "I experienced the hype at launch, and now I'm done" ironically very similar to how Pokemon Go was for me and my friends.
That sounds like a funny experience with friends! I've heard Palworld described as rough, but better than a meme game and arguably better than recent Pokemon games... I wouldn't know because I haven't played a Pokemon game in years
I started Jedi: Survivor. Not a spoiler: On the second world, there's a really tough creature you can fight. I found that interesting because they did the same thing in the first game. Just like in the first game, it took me a couple hours to beat it. I'm not into the Souls-like games and I'm impatient. So I had to relearn how to get back in the rhythm of fighting properly haha.
I felt that Jedi Survivor was a huge increase in difficulty from the first game. I put almost as much time into one run of Survivor as I did in two runs of Fallen Order, and I don't think the story is twice as long.
I agree, I played Fallen Order on grandmaster and enjoyed it, but I only made it five or six hours into Survivor before turning it down. I can't put my finger on it yet (I'm maybe 10h in) but something does feel a little off from the first game.
The same thing happened to me. GM in the first game (which I didn't think was even that hard) and anything harder than normal in Survivor just felt unfair. I enjoyed the game a lot more when turning it down. It's a shame, because I wanted more of a challenge, but some of the bosses on higher difficulties just demanded perfection and not even Souls games do that.
I'm playing on Jedi Master, but the enemies do feel a bit more difficult than FO. I generally like to stick to the one lightsaber, but there are times where dual wielding is necessary. Not a bad thing though
Yeah, I was switching stances a lot less frequently than I thought I would.
Redout
Fun racing game, very fast-paced, best played with a controller.
It's almost perfect. I have two, maybe three pet peeves (actually five-ish?) but they're mostly minor and the whole thing is amazing.
The sound cuts out when it you hit "start game" on the race/ship selection screen and it goes to the loading screen, which is a shame because the whole menu is so darn polished and pristine otherwise.
The "speed" races need feedback - speed races are time-trials where you get a time-bonus whenever you're above the target speed (e.g. 800km/h), so they're more about avoiding low speeds than they are aiming for high speeds. The problem is that there's no way to tell if you're above the target speed except to look at the left side of the screen and see if your speed-count is green, except if you look away while you're steering then you'll crash. The target speed is also specific to each race, so even if you get a sense for what exact speed counts, it'll be useless come the next race.
Going for a time-attack best lap is slightly imperfect - instead of putting your all-time best on screen and comparing to that, it compares to the best time this race. As in, the race with 3 laps. The first lap will always be ~2 seconds slower than subsequent laps (unless you really screw up), so it's mostly only useful for comparing the second lap with the third lap. It will announce if you've beaten your all-time record, thankfully, and it'll show the specific all-time record (e.g. 2mins 38sec) at the end of the match regardless of whether you beat it or not, but if you're constantly repeating the same race trying to get platinum then you'll find it kind of annoying that they've set up this beautiful time system, then fed it the wrong number.
Speaking of going for the same race repeatedly: whenever you complete a race, it'll automatically change the selected race to the next unfinished race. Which is annoying if you want to change ship, because all the races are in one big, long list (thankfully with a pageup/pagedown button on LT/RT) and you'll have to scroll all the way up and find it again, if you ever change ship or powerup.
I wish they'd added ghosts, so you can see what exactly your all-time-best did so well and race directly against it. Shame.
I wish multiplayer weren't dead.
They have this dumb treadmill system with cash and "pilot level". It's mediocre but ignorable (it's easy to get gold in the first few levels and you get more than enough for the early game unless you're switching ships a bunch, and you won't want to until late game), and if it weren't for their wager system I'd say it should be removed completely.
Speaking of the wager system: it could have been a cool system that tied into the ships and made you explore the strengths/weaknesses of each ship type. It failed, which is a shame, but at least it failed in an ignorable way so it doesn't get in the way of the game.
See, there are 5ish different (corporations?) whose ship you can choose, and each ship has four classes - class I, II, III, and IV. Any given race is locked to a specific ship class (e.g. the first 10-20ish races are all class I), so in practice the class just determines how fast the ship is. Also it changes appearance of the ship - I really like the look of the ESA class I. The thing is, different ships handle differently - for instance the Sulha ships have terrible handling but amazing speed, acceleration and boost, so if you're a speedrunner or doing time-trial on a wide map with easy turns then it's great, whereas if you're on Alaska or Europa then you're constantly spamming repairbot and/or hate yourself. In contrast, Koeniggswerth has great handling, lots of HP, lots of boost, and mediocre speed/acceleration, which apparently makes it good on some maps. I never used it much myself, the game never really made me.
Anyway, point is that the game really ought to have made some maps ship-specific to actually force players to see the benefits of those ships. It's kind of clear that the campaign was a bit underbaked, although honestly who cares - the campaign as-is is just an excuse to ask the player to win a series of races, and that's fine.
They've released a sequel (Redout 2), which I've heard was botched in a couple of ways and have been a bit leery of buying, but I figure once I finish all the DLCs (the DLCs are map packs and new races added to the campaign - this is one of the few games that can genuinely justify DLC. Just, maybe skip Vertex. Bleh, cubes.)
Factorio
Fun game, but I don't get why people actually like biters. They're just so tedious, and in MP nobody deals with them until after they start attacking the base and take out the iron mine.
Factorio is fun in that over time you have these sort of epiphanies that make you see the game differently and try different approaches. The game changes in a sort of a "there is no spoon" sense - the game isn't changing, you're changing.
Like, you start off building steam engines and you want to replace them with solar before the coal runs out. Solar sounds cool until you realize that you need an absolute ton of batteries, which means you need to set up oil first. But then later, you realize that batteries only get the last 30%ish and solar can get you the first 70% without oil. Then you realize that placing them takes ages, and so you really need to get bots first, which takes oil. And somewhere in the middle, you realize that oil can be turned into solid fuel, which makes a great coal replacement since oil in Factorio is technically infinite (the wells reduce in output over time though and bottom out around the 10% mark). And then you realize that solar is all well and good, but finding the space to keep building it out is a pain, and nuclear takes a whole lot less space. And then you realize that nuclear absolutely destroys your copper supply and takes ages of manual setup, plus you need to build a uranium mine which is logistically annoying because it requires sulfuric acid (which requires oil, water and iron so can basically never be located onsite and needs to be piped/trained in) and needs its own manual setup of centrifuging (which also kills copper and red-circuit supply, among other things). Dot dot dot. Hey, what if you just nabbed a new oil/coal mine and set up steam engines there? It's logistically trivial. And now you've come full circle.
Check out Ballistic NG if you are into these Wipeout-style games!
Starfield: I spun up a new character to explore the beta and run some quest lines to try the fixes out. I'm not too far on much this run, but it definitely looks better woth the new lighting system.
Stardew Valley: I finished my Joja Warehouse and am trying to get a greenhouse full of Ancient Fruit dor weekly income, then move into wine production as soon as I get my cellar. I have 10 growing so far as well as cranberries for frequent harvests.
Fallout: Tale of Two Wastelands. I wanted to go through all of FO3 and NV, so I set this up to play FO3 again and explore all the DLC. I did Broken Steel and The Pitt my first time, so I may skip them. Afterward I'll do New Vegas, then its DLC. FO3 is fascinating after playing Starfield as they're both the same engine, technically, so it feels like playing a museum piece in a good way.
You monster. /s
In all seriousness. Stardew is probably one of my favorite games of all time. And that achievement that is tied to the warehouse, I did not get legitimately, as in I exploited the game (which was patched out), and then deleted that save file. The ancient fruit wines can get pretty stupid with the amount you sit on to age it, if you do the most productive lay out for the casks.
Which spouse did you marry?
My first save went for Abigail I believe. I don't have anybody in mind so far for my Joja save, I just wanted to do a run, but figure I might as well use this to check the new content out.
My goal is to make and sell wine while I age it to optimize my outputs, which is the simplest way I can think to maximize my income. I also plan to try to keep crops from the year on hand.
Cocoon, it's a puzzle game with a wonderful artstyle and some pretty unique mechanics. I love the way it look and the world. The puzzles are a bit on the easy side, but I enjoy just running around looking at the eyecandy so much that I don't mind. I haven't finished the game yet, so difficulty may still increase, but so far I'm enjoying myself.
Just finished one play through of Detroit: Become Human. This game is a must-try if you like narrative games and/or dystopian stories like Blade Runner (the concept is definitely inspired by Blade Runner).
It's really the next level of a narrative video game. The fusion of gameplay and storytelling is unparalleled; it isn't just gameplay + nice cutscenes + branching story by player choice gelled together. It makes popular narrative games like The Last of Us and Life is Strange feel primitive in comparison.
I have started a replay of Cyberpunk 2077 since 2.0 and Phantom Liberty dropped, and holy crap I love it. I really liked it the first time around too (pre-2.0, post several patches of big fixes), but I think the 2.0 changes are really great. I particularly appreciate the changes to armor, so you can dress your character however you like -- very thematically appropriate, and the skill leveling system, which gives you a great incentive to mix up your weapons and play style.
Also after playing Starfield, I had forgotten that first person games could have characters that make you feel things. But Cyberpunk is so great in this area it honestly gives Baldur's Gate 3 a run for it's money. Like, I'm 95% a "gameplay" player. I'm mostly here to make numbers go up and enjoy whatever the primary loop is. It helps if there's a serviceable story, but that's not why I'm playing usually. But with Cyberpunk I'm absolutely clicking on those blue "non-essential" dialogue options, just because I need to emotionally support my friends.
I'm just bouncing around games right now, I feel like I wanna focus a bit but there's a lot I wanna catch up on...
I tried an hour or two of Palworld, it's alright, not amazing but I can see why people like it. I don't really see how much it bring anything new to the table tbh so I don't think I'm personally continuing.
After a long break from Baldur's Gate 3 (including a slightly meme run of Divinity II with a friend), I finally came back to Baldur's and I feel like starting over again lol. There's too many options and I'm not 100% in love with my current character.
During AGDQ, I pulled up my Steam deck to get through a bit of Celeste, which I played through already on my Switch. I love the game, but it's been a while since I played it so I clear a couple of screens whenever I have some down time.
The Last of Us Part II Remastered came out, and with it comes the No Return roguelike mode, I feel like I'm pretty good at roguelikes in general but No Return feels really difficult! I ended up wanting to restart Part II again to refresh my memory of the controls, but then it lead me to want to restart Part I so I can feel the story again so here we are, me replaying another game again....
Finally, I just realized Jusant was on Gamepass and after 2023's ending video from GMTK, started playing that. I love the slow gameplay and thoughtful puzzles, though sometimes getting to the start of puzzles feels a bit obtuse. Will try to get to the end of it
I'm curious if you played Celeste on the Switch Joycons or a real controller? I played on Steam Deck which has amazing controls and the buttons still hurt my fingers, can't imagine playing some of those stages on Joycons
oh man it was over 5 years ago at this point so I can't even remember lol I did play a couple of levels without the pro controller for sure but I definitely clearred a couple of screens at least on handheld mode
Ah nice, the Switch pro controller is good. I prefer the Deck's d-pad, it's a bit squishier which is perfect for me. If the Deck's thumbsticks were a little shorter I'd like that. Some parts of Celeste I wanted to move between d-pad and thumbstick from moment to moment and it was hard with those huge sticks. I know they're replaceable but that takes effort and I'm not guaranteed to love the results...
I actually replaced my joycon sticks recently! it's really easy and no more drift which i really like lol
How long was your Baldur’s Gate break, and how far in the game are you? I’ve been feeling myself slow down a bit gaming wise with it, and have been considering a break, but I’m in act 3 and ~130 hours in (very slow going) and REALLY don’t want to lose interest and restart haha. I’ve been playing a little with a friend and have been feeling a bit of wanting to start a Durge run on my own so I can create a new character, but I’m so close to finishing the game I think I just need to pull through.
probably a bit over a month! I picked up divinity original sin 2 for a friend so we were doing a meme run through it and then i went on vacation for like 3 weeks haha. i'm only just finishing up act 1, 20 hours in though so i think it's less painful to start a new run in my shoes haha.
I posted in the last thread that I had gotten Victoria 3 and was looking forward to learning and playing that. So I did. Watched a lot of vids, read the wiki a ton, and played up a few games. Had some okay success with some countries, but unfortunately ended up putting it down for a while.
I feel like the game still needs some tweaks, specifically when it comes to war and diplomacy. The economics side of things is great, and the internal politics are pretty decent as well. But as someone who came from EU4 and CK3, the war and diplomacy aspects feel a bit too janky. Besides your starting size, many of the nations I tried feel very similar to play which was not the case in EU4 and CK3. I'm not gonna be as critical as many of the people I see online who say the game sucks or is broken or whatever, but I do personally feel like it needs a bit longer in the oven. It's already got tons of great things in it (like the economics and internal politics that I mentioned), but it's missing some key things that make my preferred playstyle less fun and interesting (which is conquering everyone left and right).
Hopefully all these things are fixed or updated in future patches to the game. I look forward to devoting another whole week or two to Vic 3 sometime towards the end of the year to reevaluate.
I recently finished The Talos Principle 2 which renewed my itch for first-person exploration/puzzler games. I've had Relicta on my Switch backlog for a while, so I started working my way through that. The story so far is meh, but the puzzles felt pretty fun so I was enjoying it. At a certain point though it felt like the difficulty level just skyrocketed out of control with massive sprawling levels, timed puzzles (which sometimes required extremely frustrating speed and accuracy beyond my capabilities on the Switch's controls), and obtuse Rube-Goldbergesque puzzles that felt way more like a chore than something fun to figure out. I also wasn't digging the unnecessarily large hub worlds without any kind of mini map or quest markers, so I think I'm pausing on it for now. Not sure if I'll ever go back to continue or finish.
I also discovered that Q.U.B.E. 10th Anniversary is out on the Switch so I picked that up (I also have Q.U.B.E. 2 on there, but figured I'd play them in order so I haven't touched that one yet). I'm only a few hours in but so far I'm enjoying Qube, at least as much as I was enjoying Relicta at the beginning. Unfortunately it also has some time-and-accuracy-sensitive puzzles where you need to be able to quickly aim at and toggle series of tiles, which is equally frustrating to do without a mouse on the Switch, but nothing so bad it's made me want to give up so far. I'm cautiously optimistic that the difficulty progression will be a little gentler than Relicta's and I'll be able to get all the way through.
The Vampire Survivors addiction has started to wear off a bit, so I finally had a go at
The Forbidden CityThe Forgotten City, and I'm delighted to find it reminds me enormously of Return of the Obra Dinn. Same sort of exploration-and-investigation feel, but with NPC interaction. Very much enjoying it - it's such a rare genre.You mean The Forgotten City?
... yes, yes I do. In my defense I was out of coffee.
Comparing it to Obra Dinn really gives me a nice push in the right direction. I've owned Forgotten City for awhile now, but never started it, yet loved Obra Dinn when I played it last year.
Same here, on both counts. I had no idea it'd feel similar or I'd have started it sooner. YMMV-- it is a very different medium, since apparently it started as a Skyrim mod (and I absolutely get the feel of Skyrim from it), but the ferreting out what actually happened part is very Obra Dinn to me.
I played more God of War Ragnarök and Animal Crossing, for a balanced gamer diet
I also played the demo of The Möbius Machine and had a lot of fun with it. You play as a little spacer dude who investigates a distress call at an abandoned colony. I enjoyed the platforming and the combat (although I hope they will tweak the aiming a bit, that felt wonky), and I love the chill synth soundtrack. I will definitely buy it when it comes out in March.
Made a third attempt in as many years to get into X4, and this time managed to reach a point where my economy starts to snowball and I have a fleet large enough to get into some big fights. It's fun, though certainly not a fast game and save-scumming has saved me from a lot of otherwise very painful mistakes.
Returned to Astroneer, which is quite good fun with a friend. It's got a nice loop for a crafting/survival game where you can very much set your own pace.
I’ve been really into Tiny Rogues lately. It’s an action roguelite with a ton of content and unique visuals. Each run feels completely different depending on equipment, traits, weapons, etc. There are a ton of different characters to play as and unlock. I can’t recommend it enough for only $10. It’s still in early access so there are still more updates to come but it already feels very polished.
That looks like something I'd probably enjoy. I'll check it out, thank you!
Hope you enjoy! I have a feeling once it’s full release it’ll be a big hit.
Shadows of Doubt is an immersive sim that has you play the role of a PI investigating murders and taking random jobs for money.
The twist to this game is that everything is made using procedural generation. The city, apartments, people, murders, side jobs, evidence, the whole shebang. The cities are "small" in terms of overall square footage, I think the large city generates 12 high rises, but they are all fully explorable. Every single apartment can be entered. Every citizen has a job or unemployed, has a schedule, and a home. Some are married and live together. Places of work and businesses are also fully explorable.
There is a tutorial / starter case that is premade, but obviously the names and locations are still randomized. It gives you enough to understand generally how to go about solving a case. You also have to manage your hunger and thirst, as well as body temperature. Evidence is managed by a UI that recreates a typical bulletin board with photos, names, and pins with strings that's really fun to use. You can manage that however you want to organize it.
Most of the leg work comes from figuring out who else was at the scene of the crime or who knows the victim, figuring out their name, where they live / work and tracking them down, and finding something to tie them to the scene of the crime.
It's I think $20 on Steam, I wish more people checked it out. It's truly something unique in the gaming space. Some people balk at the graphics, but I like it, plus with the simulated nature of the game, it can kind of chug, so I think keeping with something less graphically demanding is both an artistic and necessary technical decision.
Stationeers for me. I played it for a fairly short amount of time last year and told myself I'd get into it a little more properly once I'd moved house. I'm really enjoying it but I'm the right audience for it. It's definitely a marmite game, and for the target audience it's the gift that keeps on giving.
So far I've started a Mars base and got a little green house going and some water from solid ice setup. Next job is to get some alloys out the furnace for some printer upgrades so I can get some new toys to improve my base.
Looking forward to it!
I’ve been playing four games this month
Dawn of Man: I haven’t played since 2022 and I got to say I love the optimization that went into the late game. Raids now seem appropriate for how much progress you make into the game and animal management makes sense. I wanted to love this sim when it released but I saw way too many bugs, now I can honestly vouch for this one as worth the cost and more.
Mechabellum: just an auto battler with a lot of potential I’ve been toying with. I love messing with the players who use preplaned tactics and can’t improvise so save themselves.
Destroy all humans: A very generous gift from a fellow bundle purchaser. They did a very good job touching up the remaster and It handles great on PC. Would have love an expansion of the missions too but it was always a short game. Nice little chaos sandbox.
Fae Farm: ugh so much grind. But my partner loves it so I’m her designated farm hand while she grinds the dungeons over and over again. The art is nice but I can’t help but see all the wasted potential on this one.
If you read all that thank you, please enjoy the rest of your day :).
Just finished Sable. A pleasant change of pace from what I was playing before to a super-chill exploration experience. The art style is a love letter to Gaston Giraud (aka Mobius) - I grew up on his stuff as a kid, so the set pieces in the game that reference his work made me smile.
Gameplay is easy, but slow. The hoverbike piloting mechanics in particular are positively janky. Nonetheless, I feel that the game achieves what it was intended to do: establish a parallel between exploration of the world and the exploration of oneself.
I finished Rogue Trader, had a blast with it. It's mostly alright, the game didn't feel very well balanced after chapter 3 so I dropped the difficulty down to easy and didn't have much of an issue with encounters after I did so.
I've also dipped back into another Owlcat game with Pathfinder: Kingmaker. I put about 80 hours into it on my first playthrough, but never finished the game because the builds for PC and companions were terrible. I think I'm just bad at making strong character builds. I'm almost into the final act of the game and I've had a great time with it this time around again after cranking the difficulty down from normal, most of the companions are enjoyable.
I stumbled across Enshrouded yesterday. I was a bit skeptical at first. I’ve grown a bit tired of of most survival games, but what I saw sort of reminded me of Valheim. Despite my feelings about survival games, Valheim is still one I return to at times. It feels more like an adventure game in a way.
Anyway, I’m already kind of impressed with Enshrouded. It seems well-polished, it’s very affordable, and I’m kind of surprised it’s early access. It’s a very large hand-made world that you can traverse with hook shots and gliders. I think it’s Breath of the Wild (sort of) meets Valheim. It’s a shame since I suspect it will be overshadowed a bit by PalWorld.
Videogames: Marvel Snap continues to be a weirdly addictive time sink, but I've actually been working through Citizen Sleeper and loving it. The dice mechanic is something I've seen in boardgames but never really in a video game, and a lot of the time crunch/balancing act that makes the meat of the game play is elegantly done and neatly woven into a surprtisingly engaging and sweet/melancoly story.
Speaking of boardgames, the wife and I broke out Sprawlopolis on a plane trip. It's a wallet game from button shy, who's whole shtick is to fit a game onto a small handfull of cards (18 in this case) that come in a little puch and you could carry around in your wallet for whenever. In this case each card has four city areas on it and you lay them connecting or overlapping as you'd like to build the biggest possible segments of each type, minimize the number of roads, and meet special goals for each game(that you chose by flipping over 3 of the cards at random to start). We were exhausted out of our minds so we didn't get too into it, but I'm really taken with how much game they managed to jam into such a tiny package so it's definitely hitting the table again soon.
Been playing a lot of Warcraft Rumble. It does a great job of making 'the grind' much more enjoyable then any of its competitors. The ease of compiling a full collection is a huge bonus. I don't find myself frustrated with a limited collection and unable to create the many decks / armies I want to try. Full collection compiled with the huge variety of maps and explorable single player content is absolutely amazing and keeps me playing daily.
I've just been playing on the Tildes Minecraft server. Very fun community. :)