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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 am STILL running through my first playthrough of BG3, and it is STILL incredible lol. Almost done though! There's a lot of fun in Act 3 but I think it's almost overwhelming, and there are some misses in some quest design tbh. I'm already thinking of different builds to run in my next runthroughs when I have time. (A rogue-like party and a punchy party for sure)
Update: I just beat my first playthrough at 4AM today! It was so good, I loved a lot of the character arcs.
Persona 3 Reload came out this weekend too! I haven't gone through it much yet because of some IRL activities but I'm looking forwards to the journey, I only ever played 5R but I love the characters from there. Couldn't really get into P4G but maybe after P3R!
Yeah BG3 is a good one for sure; a friend gifted it to me when it was still in Early Access. I played it for a couple hours then stopped because I was already enjoying the game so much and would rather get the full experience. Just playing the early access build and waiting months to play the rest would have driven me a little crazy, haha.
Once August came around, it was the only game I played for the entire month.
I have a bad cold, so I picked up Factorio for some quiet engineering play. I always play peaceful mode (in this case, I just have the aliens turned off) so there is no urgency to the game. It was nice to pick up a few QoL mods like loaders and early personal bots so I can focus on designing blueprints for common tasks. I have a goal to build a train-based factory using LTN.
This weekend I played God of War (2018) on PS5.
It's a franchise I avoided because it's AAA and I just assumed it was gonna be like Assassin's Creed or something. A game I'd like the idea of but would find unplayable. But I wanted a pretty action adventure game and I gave it a try since it's included in PS Premium.
Boy did it draw me in. Usually the biggest barrier to me is excessive hand holding. And while this game does some of that it kept me engaged with the story and environments and hitting a nice difficulty sweet spot. The power curve is also nice in that your actually progress so that some enemies get easier and harder enemies are introduced. A nice mix of cutting through baddies like butter and then hitting a challenging battle. Dunkey said it best "this is what AAA should mean."
Good:
Meh:
I might actually try to drop my difficulty. It isn't too hard but some combat just feels frustrating after a couple attempts especially when there are multiple waves and it's one particular wave that is giving me problems. We will see, I hope the easier setting isn't boringly easy.
I only ever watched parts of it (the close camera makes me nauseous when watching, it's fine with playing weirdly enough) and I'm definitely going to play it because I've played Ragnarök and yeah, boy did it draw me in is correct.
iirc they streamlined a lot of mechanics for the second game. Also, Kratos no longer calls Atreus boy :D They get a ton of excellent character development the first game builds the foundation for.
If you haven't, look up Dad Jokes with Kratos on YT, Christopher Judge is having such a good time with that :D
Getting even more into Rimworld, playing on a server with my friend. First time playing for either of us so we're learning the ropes. Our main security colonist was attacked by a wild lynx and almost got taken down before being saved by our leader, who killed the thing with a revolver. Medic barely got her back in time to be stabilized.
After that, we had a relatively stable period. Managed to take a raider prisoner and are working on recruiting him. Got a windmill up and running to increase our power grid throughput, so we have some electric powered work stations now. Our first potato crop came in too so we had some food security for the first time. Then, an escape pod crashed containing the injured son of our medic and we couldn't get to him in time — died and buried where he crashed. This was enough to cause our medic to snap and start wandering in a daze. We placed him under house arrest to try and get him through it but he threw a tantrum, broke out, dropped all his equipment, and wandered off into the wilderness...
Now it is fall, winter is coming, and we are down to two colonist but three mouths to feed. Gonna be a miracle if we make it through the winter.
The first winter is always rough... Now when I start a game, I always make sure to have more food than I'll ever need!
I have been playing carrion on the steam deck and is such an unexpected gem. Reminds me for its physics of the old gish at the dawn of popularized indie gaming some 10 years ago. Overall an excellent reverse horror game, incredible atmosphere, great soundtrack, anyone who likes Carpenter's The Thing will probably love this.
Ps: wow, gish is from 2004. 20 years ago. Now I feel old.
I loved Carrion, and it's also one of the first games I finished on the Deck. I found it juuuuust a bit too long though, but really fun and challenging towards the end.
Oh my god, I completely forget about Gish! Heh, thanks!
Started playing WoW again for the Season of Discovery content. Started playing a mage, but quickly realized how god-damn painful it is to have to restore mana between every single encounter. So I switched to a hunter, which I'm about to hit lvl 25 on, just in time for phase 2 to start tomorrow.
I've really enjoyed vanilla WoW's hunter. There's just so much to do. Keep track of ammo, train your pet, feed your pet, keeping aggro on your pet, etc. Just a lot of class flavor that's missing in modern WoW.
I haven't really explored of the SoD stuff much, tbh. Mostly been focusing on and enjoying the vanilla WoW experience while I level up... well mostly enjoying. The very fragmented questing in Vanilla was kind of awful.. having to bounce between 3 different zones just to keep questing is not something I've missed about WoW at all. lvls 15-22 were basically just hopping between Darkshore, Westfall, Redridge, and Darkshire. Which gets expensive and time-consuming!
How is the community for the SoD servers right now? I enjoy the gameplay of classic wow, but one thing that keeps me away is that usually the community just power games through the latest xpac or season and you just fall way behind if you're playing at a normal pace and it can sometimes be hard to get into higher tier content, like raids, when you're not established early. Maybe you're not sure yourself, since it sounds like you're just hitting the level cap for phase 1, but I'm curious how it's going. I haven't heavily played WoW in probably 5 years now, but every few months, I think about getting back into it (especially now that I'm bored with Destiny 2, but still want to do raiding).
Yeah it's hard to say since I'm just now hitting level cap. But the people I've encountered while leveling up have been amazing. I've grouped up a dozen or so times now with random people to finish quests and with the exception of one of those times it was a very positive experience. For example, yesterday most of a group I was in offered to stick around until one person finished a low drop rate quest that only they had.
That being said, I'm playing on an RP server, which tends to attract more kind people with less of a hardcore mindset.
I picked up The Messenger on @terr 's recommendation (thank you!!!). It's an NES/SNES styled sidescroller platformer that, at least to me, feels exactly like the type of game it's emulating and that's great! The visuals, audio, and controls are all on point. It's been a lot of fun, the writing is funny, and the upgrades add a number of neat movement shenanigans. I did hit a bit of a difficulty wall after a few hours that I'm working through, but it's still a good time and I'll be finishing it up probably this or next week.
In other platformer news, I've also been playing a lot of Celeste. I finally got around to finishing all the B-sides and the Farewell chapter in the last week or two. I'm working on the C-sides now and have downloaded the Strawberry Jam mod if I want to go even further. I just don't get sick of this game's gameplay. I know a lot of people have more time played than I do, but at 37 hours from a $20 platformer, that's absurdly good value.
I also picked up reiterate() on itch.io. It's a short, but tightly controlled platformer. It has some neat visuals and a neat little story, but the soundtrack is absolutely banging and the controls are good. There are a few issues with the game, like how it sometimes ate my jumps, and that the homing enemies introduced in later levels are WAY too aggressive, but I think I paid $5 or something and it was a fun couple hours.
If anybody has read my comments in these threads, you'll know that I quit Call of Duty a few months ago and have been struggling to find an FPS replacement. I was thinking maybe I'm just burned out on FPS games and not really interested anymore, considering I've been on a hiatus from Destiny 2 since December and I bounced off other games like The Finals, but I picked up Hell Let Loose this weekend, and good lord is this game fun. When watching some gameplay on twitch to get an idea of the game, it just looked like a walking and dying simulator. It kind of is, but it feels way different when you're the one at the controls, hearing explosions and gunfire everywhere. The gunplay is satisfying, the objectives are easyish to understand (at least for a 'realistic' FPS), people are friendly, and it's just a good time. There would be moments where I was pinned down behind cover for 5 minutes straight and it never really got boring, as you're tense almost the entire match from how deadly the combat is. And let me tell you, there is almost nothing as satisfying as shooting a nazi in the head from a hundred meters off with iron sights when having to properly lead their movement. It's definitely not a game for everyone, but I've played a bit of Insurgency and Red Orchestra before, so I knew what I was getting into and I enjoy it.
The last game I'll mention is the demo for Balatro. It's a poker roguelike that a friend recommended. At first, I assumed it would just be a poker bro game and not up my alley, but I gave the demo a try and my cards were haunted, tarot cards were introduced, etc. It's absolutely my type of game. Essentially, you're playing poker. You draw a hand of 8 cards or so and can discard up to 5 or play up to 5 and the goal is to make poker hands, like 3 of a kind, straights, etc. The goal is to meet the score for the round you're in. Each card has a base points value and there are modifiers added from things like joker cards (passive upgrades) and planets cards (which upgrade the number of points you get for specific hands, like two of a kind). The catch is that you also get upgrades for your 52 card deck, such as increasing points values for cards, making them count for all suits, giving you money if you play them or buff cards if you don't play them, etc., so it ramps up extremely quickly. In my last game I played, I think I had six copies of a 10 of clubs, two copies of other 10's that counted for any suit, and over half my deck was clubs by the end, with me having a ridiculous number of level up's for flushes as well as only needing four cards for a flush and getting extra multiplier on clubs played, it was bonkers. The game has a release date of Feb 20 and I'm picking this one up day 1!
Sanctum 2
I played this solo back when it came out over a decade ago I’m getting ollllddddd, but I convinced my friends to try it out recently and we’re currently enjoying it a lot.
The game really is something special. It’s a fun blend of FPS and tower defense, which is a winning formula that has surprisingly gone unexamined outside of this series. I wish there were more games like this!
It holds up pretty well by modern standards with one glaring exception: it is VERY heavy on screen shake, which you can’t turn off. I’m assuming this is on purpose, as a lot of the game involves precision aiming at enemies’ weakspots. The shaking thus makes this more challenging and is especially noticeable when you are getting overrun by enemies, which fits with the game’s tension and release cycles. Nevertheless, I think it’s WAY too much — especially as someone who’s prone to motion sickness in games. I’ve gotten used to it now, but it was definitely a little jarring at the beginning.
Playing this makes me hope that one day we’ll get Sanctum 3, but I’m not holding my breath.
Maybe. It wasn't entirely unpopular, if a bit overlooked. They're currently working on their new prize: Satisfactory. I don't expect any Sanctum news anytime soon.
Satisfactory has some of the shooter elements that Sanctum had but it's obviously in another genre entirely.
At some point perhaps hey.
I am currently horribly ill and was, as a result, possessed by a mystical spirit that influenced me into, for some reason, finally finishing Half-Life 2.
I don't actually have much to add about it that would be interesting, since it only took me a bit over an hour to go from the point I left it at several years ago (most of the way through Follow Freeman, the second to last chapter) to the end of the game. But I am absolutely horrible at playing games the whole way through, so for me, this is an achievement of sorts that I wanted to share...
Thankfully, I think saying Half-Life 2 bangs is not a very controversial statement, regardless of how "clean" my playthrough of it was!
Sorry you're sick!
Is it your first time finishing the game? Just curious, because when I'm sick I have a tendency to go to "comfort" games and play stuff I haven't thought about for a long while.
Otherwise, if you haven't, jump into Episode 1 and 2; of course, you'll never get the complete story since there will never be episode 3, but they really refine what Half-Life 2 is and focus into something even better.
Basically, yes! I do think I must have restarted once or twice in the past thinking it'd be best to start fresh again but it is actually the first time I see the credits.
Definitely will play the other eps, and thank you for the concern!
I felt that Entropy: Zero 2 is a great substitute for Half-Life 3, in the same way HL1: Opposing Force fleshed out the story of the original game. Entropy: Zero 1 can be considered an optional prequel, 2 is much better and actually focused on the Borealis plot. Transcendent stuff, especially if you liked the concept of SOMA.
Interesting! Thanks for the suggestion, I'll check these out.
I recently started playing Dragon Age: Origins for the first time, and I'm enjoying it despite parts of it clearly aging poorly. I tend to gravitate towards games with dated elements though; my most played game is Team Fortress Classic so that says a lot right there.
Anyway I'm really digging the story. I thought the whole multiple starting scenarios thing was really cool, especially for a game that came out in 2009. It allows you to get a different perspective on the game world in general.
The game play is pretty much what I expected, it reminds me a lot of Knights of the Old Republic (Makes sense, given they're both BiioWare games). It even a lot of the same issue, like characters getting stuck in the middle of combat and clicking on objects of interest can be a pain. Issues aside it generally plays well.
I really enjoyed that one when I played it.
I highly recommend the first playthrough is completed as a male noble. A female noble can work, too, but I think the male has some more interesting options available.
If I do another play through I'll try that. i went with City Elf and I think I'm nearing the end of the game.
I apparently can't stop playing Total War: Warhammer 3. I have 756 hours in it. It has gotten pretty easy, probably too easy. So I'm just cleaning up achievements and telling myself I'll be done with it after that but who knows. I keep finding reasons to start new campaigns so as long as that keeps happening I may never stop playing. I always want to find a game I will dump all my time in, just didn't expect it would be this one.
Has the grand campaign been released yet? I played a bit on release and there was a lot I liked. Siege maps are so much better (even with buggy AI), Yin/Yang balance was a lot of fun and I'm a sucker for chaos factions. But all the while I was itching for a stupid large map and every faction slugging it out.
Yeah immortal empires has been out for a long time now so the giant map is there if you want. Sieges are garbage in my opinion. I have just modded them out. Chaos factions are fun, especially Khorne and Tzeentch.
I'm over 20 hours into System Shock remake. Honestly, I don't remember that much about the original game even though I played it back in the day. Yet I feel this remake did a great job!
The atmposphere is great, the feeling is the same as I remember from my youth (general feeling) - this game doesn't have tutorial, you are not invincible and you are reminded of it through the game, you have to keep track of your progress yourself (there are logs that you can access but they may not be able to get you back to the gameplay after say a month long pause), you have to think about what your next move is and how to approach and finish it. You have to remember certain things because they may be your goal in a few hours.
This is proper game as if it was from the time when I started gaming! I think average today's gamer won't be able to play it. It is too hardcore compared to many new games. And that is what I love about it! I like games that challenge you in some way or another and System Shock remake challenges you in all ways possible.
I'm probably 70-80% in the game and I may be finishing it this week. What a game!
I need to restart this one. I played 11-hours, but it just didn't hit the same as the original game and something about it just felt kind of off to me and I didn't click with it in the same way I did the original. I had a few complaints as well, mainly the pixelated textures just felt odd and incongruous with the rest of the graphics, as well as the excessive animations for picking stuff up like the voice logs.
That said, I may not have been in the correct headspace to really get into it and enjoy it, so I do want to restart it. I do wish it ran better on my laptop though, as I could play it on my Steam Deck, but it just doesn't necessarily feel like the correct fit to me.
It's true that abimations are excessive. They add up to realism though. Pixelated textures don't on he other hand... They are ok until you come up straight up to the wall, then they look like huge coloed boxes. I'm no graphics engineer to know what can cause this. It looks either like engine limitation (I don't believe this) or that it was made like this on purpose (I don't believe this either).
I actually play on Steam Deck. This game is partly FPS and as such is not that easy to play with sticks... But I managed so far. There is some charm to play at 22:00 in the bed in a dark bedroom with headphones :-)
Good luck playing on non-dedicated graphics, as it looks like this remake is graphics heavy! It also looks good though with corridors you don't want to enter when you see how dark they are and all the shadows in the corners and such.
I believe the pixilzation on the textures is actually a deliberate choice, but I just don't get along with it. To me, it's so aggressively clashy with the rest of the graphics, it just never looks right.
As for Deck, it definitely runs and plays well, it just doesn't feel right to me when I play it there is all. As for my laptop, I definitely don't have dedicated graphics, though my old system did and it didn't run much better; disappointing is all, as the game doesn't look good enough to run as poorly as it does. There are very many games which run quite well across my computers that look significantly better, in addition to running very well.
I suppose I mostly just came away disappointed with it initially because I had very high expectations, since I loved the original game so much.
Yeah, probably different expectations on your and my side. I wanted to play System Shock and never got to ay the old one or Enhanced edition. I had it even installed but rather jumped on other games. This remake kinda did it for me and I'm playing the (kinda) good old System Shock once again.
It has high HW requirements, that's for sure! I managed to run Horizon Zero Dawn at around the same framerate at the same TDP and it looked much better than System Shock.
So not only does it have hardcore old game mechanics, but it also comes down to how it looks and runs (personal expectations as you described). I knew it wouldn't be for everyone! Yet it will find its players - just that there won't be that much of them.
Still been playing Breath of the Wild on my Steam Deck and still enjoying it, though I'm starting to peter out a little bit with it after maybe 20-25 hours. Not that it's bad or anything, but my mood is starting to shift and it's a game where when I fire it up, I want to play it for long periods, which I just don't really have available right now.
But recently picked-up Valkyria Chronicles on Steam, as I enjoyed what I played of the second game on PSP and after playing Advance Wars 2 for awhile (which I may or may not go back to), I got the itch for some more strategy. I'm a little torn on it, since my introduction to the series was on PSP, it kind of feels like I should just go back and play 2 there; as well, there's a lot of exposition and story in the original game, which is fine, but it's very Anime, which is just not something I'm really into. That said, I'll probably continue playing the first game on my Deck, as I am enjoying it.
Finally started Last of Us Part 1. It's...fine. I'm a decent way through the game, finished the town with Bill and am in the middle of fighting some raiders trying to get to a bridge. Not sure how far in the game that is total but it seems a decent amount.
I think it's fine. The gameplay is fun, but nothing about it seems very standout. The characters are well written and the story is keeping me interested for now.
I think it's really suffering from overhype for me. I've never heard anything but praise for this game and if I had been able to play it when it came out I may have been much more invested but for some reason it just seems like a good zombie game. Not a great, epic, industry defining piece of art.
Maybe that'll change as I play more but idk, definitely feeling a big disappointed
At this point the game is over a decade old, you'll see elements that Naughty Dog pioneered (both in Uncharted and TLOU) and have since become dated or perfected in other games. It's no surprise it feels a bit lackluster, at this point it is.
Even so, the game was mostly praised for its story and storytelling, with the connection between Joel and Ellie coming to the fore in small conversations or triggered scenes through environmental storytelling.
Perhaps if you can shift the focus to their relationship it's salvageable for you, because the gameplay won't improve from here until the end.
Well that's the same, the story feels like it's been done also. It feels very similar to Telltales TWD, or to a lesser extent Mandalorian/Bad Batch.
It's just person/people taking care of kid who has nothing left and build a connection together/found family.
The story may have felt more revolutionary at the time, but just like the gameplay, similar stories have been told since that I already have a stronger connection with.
Obviously I don't know exactly what I have in store for the rest of the game, I'm only about 1/3rd through it right now, but between the overhyped expectations, the time, and the little I know of it from cultural osmosis, I don't expect I'm going to have that connection everyone else seems to have
The story itself isn't remarkable and wasn't then. The revolutionary aspect was how a game could tell a story like this and the elements they used to do so. Finding a small trinket somewhere triggered a conversation that gave you a little glimpse in their history or you could see the bond build. The way it was done was new then. Or at least not to such a scale.
And yeah.. I totally understand you don't connect with it like the people then did. The show that was released recently made it more modern and even then it's still a fairly straightforward story. I don't think anyone will fault you for not liking it, save for those terminally online nutters but those should be ignored anyhow.
It does wrap up the story with a nice bow, so if you're at least a little bit interested in how it ends you won't be left dissatisfied.
Yeah it's still a decent game, I'm enjoying playing it overall, it's just been built up as this masterpiece and to me it probably won't be that, doesn't mean it isn't still good.
And good is hard to find these days.
I agree with you. I don’t understand the hype. The gameplay was good but not necessarily great. I didn’t think the story was that good, really, but it was very well presented most of the time.
I think that in some cases games have become like the music industry has become. People partake of it for cultural reasons rather than for the sole purpose of their own private enjoyment. That sort of makes sense for multiplayer games, where this kind of thing seems strong, but I see it more and more in single player games too.
I really like that music analogy. It makes a lot of sense. People listen to music for various reasons so it tracks that we play games for different purposes too. Like you might have a specific playlist for exercising and it'll be completely different to something you hear while your kids are around, or when you're trying to concentrate for work, or when you're at a party with a bunch of people over....
So the same can be true of games. Sometimes you want something to unwind after a long day and you'll prioritize a game you've played countless times before and feel comfortable in. Other times you want to play with friends to be able to socialize with other players, so you play what they're all playing, even if it's something you never would have tried by yourself. Maybe you only have a few minutes to play while you're on public transportation or something, so you hit up your favorite mobile game to distract you from the banalities of everyday life. And sometimes you might want to play a classic that you've heard about so many times but never tried before, just to see what all the hype was about. You might love it, or you might think "that was it?"
I played it way back when it released and I had similar feelings, hated how I felt railroaded and just wasn't having any fun with the game. It felt more to me that Naughty Dog should be making movies, because it felt like a poor excuse for a game.
Still feel that way, if it's not obvious.
I know other commenters have said that it's ten years old so it's no wonder it's a bit long in the tooth but I disagree. I didn't really like it at the time, the gameplay was boring, gunplay was bang average, the stealth segments were infuriating and even the story is bog standard, and was done better by Telltales TWD. I never got emotional through the story, didn't really connect with the characters, and found it a bit wanky at points.
It put me off Naughty Dog as a developer as I wasn't a huge fan of the Uncharted series for similar reasons.
To be fair as well, I enjoyed TLoU as a TV show, it resonated better with me in that medium where I didn't have to drag myself through dire gameplay segments between cutscenes.
Yeah I'm interested in the show but I wanted to play the game first before watching it
I'm a professional game designer, specializing mainly in collectible card games (CCGs) and mobile strategy.
I went back to Marvel Snap this month, partially for research and partially to explore the updates they've made to economy and card acquisition. Having been away for almost a year, I'm impressed by the improvements. It feels easier to collect cards and the spotlight system offers a path to planning out and optimizing my collection. That said there's still room for improvement and collecting has to be their biggest barrier to attracting new users, bringing back previous customers, and retention.
I've also been spending a lot of time with Warcraft Rumble for similar reasons. I've written about it a bit previously and I'll copy paste most of that here. "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 continue to play most, if not all the classic CCGs and new releases. If anyone is interested in chatting about game design and / or CCGs and mobile strategy, hit me up.
I really love game design, I wish I had known it sooner in life because I think it would be a fulfilling career path for me. But it wasn't until my 20's I really learned about board games and started playing MTG. Now a days I don't get as much time as I'd like to keep up with that area.
My path to game design was through MtG. I was a pro tour competitor and consistently placed in the top 25 legends on Hearthstone. I knew people through my gaming days, they had positions at a game design company, and they were looking for playtesters and contractors. They liked my work and brought me on full time as an associate designer and I worked my way up.
Power creep is endemic across CCGs, not just MtG. I don't know what the best solution is. When you're releasing as many cards as they are, new space is devoured at breakneck pace. I think there's unexplored space to manage power-creep with a more SNAP-like release schedule. Even back when I was playing MtG , I felt like the MtG release schedule was way too aggressive. It's unfortunately something they're locked into because of their blind-reveal collection model.
Yea I think competitive games need either power creep or rotation (or both, like in MtG) to be sustainable as a business.
EDH is kind of neat, because the focus is kind of on collection and personalization rather than winning so delivering on more playstyle niches is an avenue they can pursue to offset power creep. Of course there is still power creep in EDH, but they do try and constantly support new archetypes as well.
I was in a similar boat with Marvel Snap. Played A TON of it a few months ago, getting to infinity every season and collecting nearly all the cards without spending a dime on the game, then they started making a bunch of changes to card acquisition and specifically the new card releases that were coming out more frequently and regularly. The problem was that (most of) these new cards were so important to the meta and yet so ridiculously grindy to acquire without spending any money. Felt pretty shitty for people who didn't want to or couldn't spend money on the game.
I don't pretend to know everything that goes on behind the scenes at a game studio like that, but the balance behind new card strength and how much real-world time it took to unlock them felt like they were artificially inflating things to trigger FOMO and milk out as much profit as they could. I could be wrong, but those were my thoughts on the game and I haven't played it in almost a year now despite playing it daily for a few months.
Been meaning to give it another shot but I'm worried that not much will have changed regarding card acquisition.
It feels to me like card acquisition is better, but not solved. You can save up 'spotlight keys' now so that you have a little more agency as to which cards you are picking up on the track. I'd still like some kind of low spend path to staying current, or at least a month or so behind, but I don't know that that's their priority.
I'm still going through Monster Hunter World. I did a post about it a few days ago, and in the moments between things kept at it.
Originally my character was built to capitalize on stunning, but as I made my way through master rank, I came to understand how I could transition toward a much more powerful build focused on affinity and critical damage. I went from a dragon knight, to a barbarian lord, and then changed again, to a barbarian edgelord.
It's so good. I've got crit chance maxed along with crit boost and weakness exploit, plus free element and Airborne. Meaning, I can rush in, deal constant crit damage, put the monster to sleep with my weapon, bomb its face, rush in again with a jump attack and take it right back down. It's like going from performing well to controlling your performance, and looks badass the whole time. Can't ask for better lol.
Except I got better anyway, because of the pendant. That chicken hanging from the hilt makes a squawking noise when you draw and when you do combos, so my battle cry is a down-pitched rooster warble.
Finished up Dredge last week. I really enjoyed it, it has that creepy atmosphere that never quite goes away. I will say the fishing minigames got a little boring towards the end but exploration was still fun enough to keep going.
Downloaded Firewatch when it was on sale for $2 not too long ago, so that is next on my list!
I loved Firewatch! It's a fairly short game, 4 hours ish for a first playthrough. Hope you enjoy!
I've bought Firewatch for 2€ too. I have played it right away. It's not a bad game, but I'm glad I didn't pay full price. For 2€ it's great!
Persona 3 Reloaded has finally arrived and both my wife and myself have jumped headfirst into the deepend. It's my wife's first time with P3, but I've been a huge fan for many years. I remember playing through P3 in college on break and it was one of the best games I've ever played. I'm super excited that they remade it and filed off all the rough edges. The game (so far) holds up incredibly well and I'm looking forward to if it sticks the landing as well as I remember.
P3P is a game that's been rotated between active play and my back burner for something like 10 years now.
I initially started emulating it on my phone, moved to an actual PSP, then to a Vita, then to a Steam Deck. I occasionally go back to it, but every time I do, I notice that the last time I stopped playing was because I had to slog through Tartarus. Seems like I go back, knock out a few levels and then put it down; I think we this point I'm in the 200s for Tartarus levels, but I haven't been ready to go back to it yet.
Did they fix the tedium of the dungeon? I really love the visual novel aspect of P3, but the dungeon is just an absolute slog; I do want to finish it so I feel like I can go to P4G, even if they're unrelated, I feel like I need to finish one before I start the other.
Tartarus is generally the same with a huge visual face lift. It was, however, given some solid QoL improvements. For starters, there's no "condition" effects anymore. Gone are the days of staying too long in Tartarus and getting sick, missing out on that sweet, sweet VN time.
Also, there's way more loot. There are pillars crystalized shadows that you can break to potentially gain items. There are also a new type of chest that are locked, requiring the use of "Twilight fragments" to unlock them. These chests provide strong new gear, allowing for you to keep up with the gearing and pacing. Characters also get, after a certain point in the story, access to strong moves called "Theurgy" which allows for a bit smoother sailing while trying to make it to a border floor.
On normal, so far, we haven't had much trouble taking 1-2 visits to Tartarus to get as high as we can before spending the rest of our time focusing on the VN aspect of the game. This part, btw, is really good with the bonus of the visual overhaul and some excellent voice acting. They're all fully voiced as well, leading to some vastly improved story telling.
But, I would say for your P3P run: you're most of the way to the top already. Unless you want to start over with P3R, you can't be too terribly far away from the end of the game. I do vastly prefer the presentation of P3R compared to the constrained version of P3P, so take that as you will.
Sounds like a solid upgrade and the way you describe it is definitely tempting, because I largely don't remember a lot of what's happened in P3P, given that I've been playing it for nearly 10 years now, off and on. But I guess that isn't saying much, since I can't remember anything, movies, books, games, a day or two after I've completed them.
But yeah, I probably will continue with P3P, if only because at this point it just feels right to me on a handheld. Something I often get cozy with in bed and play, which I can do with my Deck, but tends to just be a little too unwieldy lying in bed.
Void Stranger
Bought after watching part of thevoiceofdog's playthrough, but not enough of it, I'm now actually having a bit of buyer's remorse!
The positives:
The less good stuff:
the story feels ehh to me. Initially, it felt very heavily like it was just Berserk with a new skin on top. Which isn't bad in principle, I love Berserk! However, some of the character interactions are very trope-y and that's just not a style of anime/ manga that I'm into; the plot feels wishy washy and tricky to follow in places.
the cutscene art and some of the character design in it is similarly not my tempo. Certain anime/ manga has a habit of producing some extremely top heavy female characters whose specific designs feel inherently sexual. Don't misunderstand me - big chested women exist, but if you've seen how this is done, you know what it looks like. It feels unnecessary and fairly uncomfortable to me.
Other stuff
Stepmania
I've been having great fun installing this again! I'll be having a DDR setup at my wedding in the summer. I've been playing on keyboard for now to test things out but I got the dance pad out of the loft last night and want to check that it all works ok and order another.
I'm categorising songs in a way that'll be accessible to my guests (90s - 00s, 80s, "Oldies", etc.) and found a really promising AutoStepper tool developed by someone called Phr00t that I'm using to push out some step charts quickly for manual tweaking in SMEditor.
I'm currently playing Like a Dragon Gaiden - The Man Who Erased His Name (bit of a mouthful, that), which happens to be on Gamepass at the moment. It is my first experience with a Yakuza/Like a Dragon game, and so far I am enjoying it. I bumped the difficulty down to easy and am finding the game much more enjoyable for it. It's got some very silly stuff going on, but I am enjoying the modern Japan setting and the combat is fun, and the story is keeping my interest. I enjoy just roaming around Osaka beating the shit out of gangs of street thugs and doing silly errands for people almost as much as I do playing the story missions. Definitely not something I would have dropped $60 or $70 on, which makes it a pretty good candidate for Gamepass in my book.
Fallout: New Vegas
I just finished a playthrough of the base game (after a decade of never touching it) before I learned that my friend had access to all of the DLC content, which I had never seen before. So I started a new playthrough and raced to level 15 before starting Old World Blues, which is what I'm currently on. I've always done high sneak/guns/lockpick builds but this time I'm prioritizing energy weapons (already at 100), science, explosives and medicine, which has been a nice change of pace. There is not a problem that spamming 40mm grenades cannot solve.
I know I'll want to do another playthrough after this one so I was considering doing a beefy melee build just because I would find it consistently funny to smash ghouls with rebar clubs.
Had a break from D&D for a few weeks die to one of the party going on holiday and then working some very early shift patterns so we all took the opportunity to play Lethal Company.
Had such a great laugh with it, I'm normally such a shite bag when it comes to horror games and I tried a solo run once or twice but it's terrifying. With friends though it turns into one of the funniest games I've played in a long time.
Even better with some mods installed as well!
I spent my weekend on Diablo 2, 3, and 4.
Diablo II Resurrected
I finally beat Diablo on Normal with my summoning necromancer. And that. Was. Painful. Find mobs, kill them, summon skeletons, go back to Diablo, cast a curse, hope he doesn't wipe the skellies before than can land a few hits, rinse and repeat. You gotta appreciate the basic concepts of modern game designs like "balance".
I'm now on Act V, that I never played on the original game, and you can see glimpses of how the gameplay is starting to change to something more action-packed.
Diablo III (Nintendo Switch)
The best platform to play Diablo III on. The bounties and endgame structure are perfect to play on the Switch in short resumable sessions. It's also the best ARPG on the Steam Deck, if you're ok with emulation, no multiplayer, and no seasons.
I started a seasonal barbarian, probably my least-played class. I'm still surprised how mobile is this tank of a character as I jump and stomp everywhere on puny demons.
Diablo IV
I initially put the game down after painfully finishing the campaign, but decided to try it again with this 3rd season. It's still not the game I want it to be, but I feel it's getting better. Seasons also have their own (short) campaign and strong gameplay gimmicks, which help keeps things a bit more fresh. I'm playing a rogue that hits hard.
Last Epoch official release is February 21st! Ahhhhh yes!
If you haven't heard about it, it's a great ARPG in the same vein as Diablo 2 (play style is like a more modern Path of Exile, but the passive trees and skill trees aren't nearly as insane in complexity).
I've got my eyes on it for a few months, but I'll wait for the full release (and some reviews) before buying it. From what I've read, a 1.0 this month seems a bit premature?
I haven't played since they released the rune master mage specialization a couple months ago, but it was really fun. The story itself is complete as far as I'm aware, so if you wanna get in and start noodling around with all the existing classes you should be fine up to lvl 70 or so.
Last Epoch is fine, I still very much prefer Grim Dawn of all the arpgs. But it can be... grim.
I tried Grim Dawn a few times but couldn't really get into it, unfortunately. I think I get a form of analysis paralysis because of the (permanent?) choices you have to make when leveling, and I'm afraid to make a bad or not enjoyable build.
For all the flak Diablo 3 and 4 (justifiably) got, I enjoy being able to turn off my brain when playing them.
In Grim Dawn it's possible to reset your skill points. It's fairly easy to re-do a build, unlike a lot of similar games.
I've been trying to pick up and finish some shorter indies lately, so I played through Jusant on Game Pass. It was a bit more linear than I was expecting, but I really enjoyed exploring the world they had built. I don't often strive for 100% completing games, but I'm pretty close so I might dive back in and find the last few collectables I missed.
I, too, have been playing Jusant. I find the "puzzle" description it gets a little... puzzling. It's not very open world and it's not very puzzl-y. I keep feeling like I'm missing some part of the game. That being said, I am really enjoying it! It is a really nice game to relax with in the evening and explore the world and read through the lore.
It's very mild on the puzzle aspect, it's mostly referred to as a puzzle game because it's the closest description. Since it isn't really a walking simulator game, and it isn't a story driven game necessarily, it's kinda hard to pin down. There's some lightweight puzzles to figure out how to get from a to b sometimes so puzzle is the closest descriptor.
Definitely not open world, whoever called it open world is crazy. It's absolutely a linear experience.
Board game wise, I played Dice City a dice rolling strategy/crafting game where you roll a bunch of dice for resources or events and then use those to build up your little kingdom, fight bandits (or the other player) and trade. It's a game I keep coming back to because it hits the sweet spot of resource management and building for me while not being super heavy on the strategy. Also, the artwork is neat and detailed.
Video game: more Animal Crossing, and I also played more of The Invincible. It's a walking simulator in space, based on a novel by Stanislaw Lem. The game nails the feel of Lem's writing (although take that with a grain of salt, it's been a hot minute since I read his works) and it has a very cool look, like old school scifi illustrations with colours that pop. It's a slow game, and I'm enjoying it immensely. I really like the character you play, a scientist names Yasna who suddenly finds herself in the situation to have to look for and save the rest of her team on an alien planet, with only the astrogator up in the mother ship for support via comms. I think I'm about to head into the end game (it's not a long game, less than ten hours even with stopping frequently to take screenshots) and I'm invested in how it will end.
I also picked up my fifth playthrough of The Witcher 3 again, and it's still a fun and gorgeous game. I just don't get tired of it - I'm about to play the end of the main game and then it's time for Blood and Wine and meeting my favourite character in the whole game (well, except Geralt), Regis. I have't played Blood and Wine for a pretty long time since I always delete all my saves when I finished a playthrough and I'm looking forward to seeing beautiful Toussaint again.
I'm glad to read a positive review of The Invincible. I absolutely loved the demo I played a while back and have had it on my shortlist for a while now for when I'm feeling that type of game. From the demo it was absolutely stunning and I can't wait to get deep into some story.
I read a review that complained very bitterly about the lack of a run button and the slowness. And both of these are true but they're also part of the point of the game!
btw if the vibe of The Invincible is your jam, there's a 1960s Czech movie based on another Lem novel called Ikarie XB-1 that's worth watching, it's beautiful and thoughtful
I can kind of echo the sentiment that moving a touch quicker would be nice but I agree, from the amount I played of the demo, the pace is part of the experience of the game.
Thanks for the movie recommendation. I've thrown it on my watch list. Looks like it's not too hard to get a hold of, thankfully.
I also played (or my Partner in Crime played while we chatted/tried to figure out the puzzles together) Gris - it's an indie platformer with puzzles, not too challenging. But it is a delight to play - the art if beautiful (heavily inspired by Eyvind Earle, I'm sure) and so it the music. Your task is to collect lights which not only give you new powers but also return more and more colour to your world. It has a sense of wonder that I love and that keeps me engaged, curious to see what will be around the next corner. It's free on Xbox Gamepass right now!
Recently finished up Expeditions: Rome.
I think it has quite a few smaller issues that annoyed me a bit while playing through, but overall I had a good time with it. The XCOM-like combat was fun, and the "overworld" parts of conquering some region using your legion was passable, and the story was engaging enough. I think my biggest issue was that the game play progression (but using your characters and the legion) mostly consisted of "number get bigger".
I also think there was a bit too much waiting. If you want to craft a new weapon, or heal one of your characters, or refill your tactical items, you have to wait for an in-game day or two, and that means just standing in place and letting time pass (as I don't want to do a mission without my equipment and/or fully healed characters). So there was a lot of enter camp -> craft thing/heal character/assign some research -> leave camp -> wait for some time -> enter camp to get equipment/character.
Some of the larger missions tended to have quite some wait time as well, as you watched both the enemy and your allies do all their movement across the map. Maybe I missed a setting for speeding that up, but it got boring quickly to watch NPCs shuffle around the map, but at the same time you want to know what they're doing so you can respond properly... Mostly an issue in the missions at the end of acts, other missions were usually small enough that it wasn't a problem.
There is also a loot system in place, which I mostly ignored as I had more unique items than I could equip my characters with, so all the standard equipment got dismantled for salvage.
It's easy to focus on the bad parts, but I played the game for 44 hours (completing every quest I came across), so there is bound to be some friction I guess. I think it could have benefited from some more focused game play parts, it feels a bit wide and shallow at times, but I had pretty fun with it anyways, both game play and story!
I have neglected my steam deck this past month, so now I'm playing Roguebook on it. It can be boiled down to a Slay the Spire-like, but with enough twists to make it different. The map traversal is different, your party consists of two heroes, so position matters, and swapping places can have effects etc. I was never super deep into StS, but liked it enough, so my intent is to kill the final boss a few times and then move on, but we'll see!
I just quickly bought and played through all of Pseudoregalia after being highly recommended by Nitro Rad for a second time. It's a very minimalist game with a lo-fi presentation and it's very short, but I'd say it's still worth the price of admission. It's basically what you'd get if you made Super Mario 64 as a metroidvania. The platforming move set is such a shining star that the things that are meant to act as gates to your progression can usually be overcome with a bit of skill and ingenuity; I found myself getting into some of those areas without even realizing that I wasn't really supposed to be there yet.
It's a bit hard to put into words how it felt, but the freedom the game gives you combined with it's fairly forgiving checkpoints was very refeshing. In addition to the named moves that you have to collect there are a number of hidden moves that you can perform kind of like fighting game combos that you can discover in a way that kind of reminds me of Rain World. I would really love it if it gets a sequel with some better graphics and a story to tie it together. I've really grown to like the main character Sybil's design, so it would be fun to see her in another outing.
Recently played the 90s-inspired boomer shooter Nightmare Reaper for my roguelike podcast
Overall: I think half of our podcast hosts liked it as a flawed gem, and the others didn't find it their cup of tea. To be fair, they aren't super into old school sprite-based shooters as much anyway, but NR has some design flaws that anchor it down. For me, I thought the presentation and overall flow was great, but the minigame-based upgrade system is a total bummer the longer you interact with it.
The upgrade system really needs to be taken out completely. The idea is that the main player character has a gameboy that you play tiny Mario stages in to get some extra currency before completing the level and getting the unlock you, well, paid for at the start. The stages are short and easy enough that they aren't a problem per se, just not interesting enough to warrant an extra 2 minutes of playtime.
But it gets so much worse than that. There's a second and third upgrade tree that have totally separate, yet somehow more tedious minigames. One is an open world pokemon, the other is an open world space exploration game. These would be neat easter eggs to find in the world of the game, but really anchor the gameplay significantly. There's an accessibility option to skip them entirely and I can't imagine playing the game without that option on. If you couldn't skip them, they'd probably be one of the worst upgrade systems in a game I've ever played if I'm being honest.
I think there's an idea of 3dRealms-era shooters that translates very well to roguelike/lite genre games, but NR doesn't quite fit. It feels too rooted in the aged-poorly design ideas of the past with find-key-open-door gameplay flow and map design. In fact, I think procedural map design kind of goes in the opposite direction to that kind of idea.
That being said, the chainsaw weapon has a grappling hook attached to it, which is maybe one of my top 10 favorite weapon ideas in a game ever.
I've been bouncing around between a few different games lately.
Helldivers 2 - It's fun...when you can actually get into a game. A blast with friends, though the matchmaking/online connectivity needs some work. The devs say they're on it. It's more or less the same game as the original, just with a third-person perspective instead of a top-down one. Some things are different, like the current lack of mech stratagems and not having weapon upgrades. Hopefully both will come back eventually.
The Room 1-4 - Sort of a puzzle/escape room type game where you solve increasingly difficult puzzles of different types to progress. There's a sort of loose, vaguely Lovecraftian story you pick up through reading letters and journals that can be found strewn among the areas you visit. It's fun if occasionally frustrating. Something different other than roguelikes or mindlessly blasting anything that moves like the stuff I typically play.
Starship Troopers: Terran Command - I stopped playing this for a while because initially I had a hard time getting the feel for it. A real-time tactics game more than an RTS. Fun if you enjoyed the tongue-in-cheek satire of the film, and it does a good job of melding together tech from the 3 live-action films (they work in the pulse rifles from 2 and the Marauders from 3 for instance) and a bit from the Japanese ones. It can get a bit frustrating in the later missions, though. Sometimes you don't start with a lot of resources and it can take some time to build up to a point where you can finally push through.