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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.
Pacific Drive
If you're like me and love Half Life 2: Ep 2 or Dying Light: The Following because of your best friend car companion, please try this game. I don't want to talk about it too much because finding out how stuff works is half the fun, but it's got some top notch wasteland driving and atmosphere.
I'm just amazed how well put together the entire package is. I'm a sucker for interesting UI and I love to see near every menu and display is completely diagetic. The hud and menus are displayed on an AR headset but so much info and details are shown on little displays and screens in the car. Even just the ritual of going to a GPS machine to view the map makes every action feels deliberate.
Also, if you liked the crafting system from Prey (2017), it's kinda got that as well.
As a fan of the STALKER games, I enjoy the vibes of Pacific Drive. I get that the environment's supposed to be hostile and partly horror, but I guess I'm so used to it that I can kinda just cruise through it like it's a scenic drive. More relaxing than I anticipated it to be.
Man, I desperately want to play this, but it doesn't have an option to Save mid-mission or at the very least a Save and Quit option. After some Googling this morning, it looks like the developer is adamantly insisting that it's not possible due to "technical" reasons, which is extremely disappointing. The one saving grace is that if it gets optimized a bit more to run on Steam Deck, I may actually be able to play it since I'll be able to suspend at the very least.
Closest we currently got is an autosave when entering a new area, found that out by crashing when going from a highway stop to the actual junction, it put me directly at the highway's junction.
Still shit we can't save and stop mid-run, but that'll have to do for now.
I just picked up Vampire Survivors for the first time over the weekend. I'd heard about how addicting it is, and had even watched a few let's plays, but for some reason I didn't think it was for me.
Then, while I was looking for a new mobile game, Google recommended the Android version to me. I thought, "sure. Why not?" and proceeded to sit entranced for like two hours. Then, in a moment of near clarity, I realized I could probably do better with a controller (hate touchscreen controllers), so I rushed to my gaming PC and bought it on Steam. Didn't even look at the price until afterward, which is absolutely unheard of for me, as I'm a inveterate wishlister.
Anyway, I'm lost now. I'll come ask you folks for advice when I'm ready to seek treatment.
I really liked vampire survivors. I find myself really only playing one build though, which I guess isn't a bad thing, but it's more of the same every run through. But it's a fun game nonetheless
I'm still unlocking stuff, which encourages different builds. I do lean pretty heavily on garlic, though, especially early in a run.
HELP I'M ADDICTED TO BALATRO.
About 18 hours or so of gameplay, I've beaten a base difficulty run for every basic deck at least once, and Red Stake difficulty on one or two decks too. I feel like it's eating away at my brain the same way Slay the Spire did.
Also picked up Helldivers 2 this weekend to play with friends, since they upped the server count. It's fun! I enjoy the kinda mindless shoot the shit type of game play and have been enjoying the pretty basic gameplay loop.
I finally finished Persona 3 Reload, I really enjoyed the major plot a lot, and the side characters were definitely interesting. I still think that P5R was better overall, especially the writing for the side characters and social links, but I think it's understandable given P3R's first take at it. I enjoyed the theming of P3R a lot though, and I think the final boss wraps up the main plot very well. Hoping they do P4G remade in the same style tbh, because it's really hard for me to get into P4G after playing both P3R and P5R lol.
I'm looking for another single player game to kinda grind through now, maybe Yakuza 0 and finally finishing Hitman 3? I've been playing a lot of single player games by myself and I really enjoyed just kinda no-lifing into those kinds of games, especially cuz it helps me with my weight because i get totally immersed and forget to snack.
Balatro is so good! I love roguelikes as a genre, but feel a lot of them get too bloated or grindy. Balatro does it perfect, with new things and strategies to try without feeling like I "have to die" so many times to unlock the tools I need to succeed. And I love playing cards as a mechanic, and the constant risk/reward of discarding and the giant numbers and multipliers really tickles the gambling addiction in all of us (without the downsides!). At the price of lunch it's an insane pickup. Also, works perfect on steam deck, even has proper controller icons!
Shoutout (again) to @EsteeBestee for putting me on it last week with their post last week on this thread! My personal favorite roguelike is Slay the Spire without a doubt, so it scratches that itch for me a lot. It has almost a Mahjong feel to me too, with the discarding things to hope for a better hand kind of deal, so that's also been really good for me too. Such a good deal for an amazing game for sure.
Balatro is becoming a problem for me. I think I've played 20 hours and the game hasn't been out for a week. I'm glad you're enjoying it, as well!!
Balatro is so, so good. My friend has been playing it so much that I’ve taken to referring to him as Balatro Barry 😄 I’ve only beaten it twice so far, but can’t wait to play more and discover the rest of the cards.
I also have been sucked into Balatro and Helldivers. They're an excellent pair of games to scratch different itches.
I've been working my way through replaying all of the Arkham Games. I beat Asylum and City, and am now working on Knight. The last time I played Arkham Asylum and City was back on my PS3, and, while I remember enjoying both, I also remember not enjoying Aslylum nearly as much as City. At the time, the size of City was incredible, and it made Asylum feel tiny in comparison. Now, though, as I replay them, I realize that my enjoyment and appreciation of Asylum has gone up considerably, and my "rose-tinted glasses" seem to have fallen off for City.
Akham Asylum - The game that really popularized the "rhythm-based" combat system that even games today continue to use. (I'm looking at you Spider-man.) Immediately two things jumped out to me: the short time it took to get to controlling Batman, the well done exposition in the intro that tells you everything you need to know to really get started, and the art style that oozes personality. Even though Arkham Asylum released in 2009, I feel like it still holds up today purely on art style alone. The facial animations are a bit weak and textures at times a little low resolution, but the style makes up for that easily. It also merges gameplay with graphical fidelity. I always knew when I needed to look at something or go somewhere. It was obvious thanks to careful placement and skillful design. Overall, I would say I loved my revisit to this game. The PS3/XBox 360 era really was a magical time (if you ignore the brown color palette that almost every game loved using).
Arkham City - Two things jumped out to me regarding my first 30 minutes: First, the intro from booting the game up to taking control of Bruce was done amazingly. The white title card was chef's kiss. Second: The whole scene with Catwoman, Two Face, and Batman felt like a nonstop cliche/one liner barrage. Every line felt like it was forcing in a pun. The rest of the game is fantastic, though. Ignoring some very specific moments in the story that felt... rushed? Or just done too quickly? I don't know. There were two specific moments that simply felt like more setup was needed, or more backstory given. I know the story behind Talia, but every interaction with her felt like I had to just assume that the history was there, instead of it actually being there. I think it might actually be an issue with the pacing of City. Gameplay wise, it works fantastically, and that should be the goal of a game in my opinion. But storywise? It is just non-stop adding more and more tension. I still enjoyed Arkham City, but I can confidently say that it is not as "perfect" as I once thought. I would still give it a stupidly high rating, but there are definitely some cracks there.
Arkham Knight - I don't have as much to say here, as I'm only 3 hours in. I can confidently say that this game is what made me hate the way dialogue is done in the whole series. The "I need to make a call, so I have to stand still, or only walk around aimlessly for however long" really makes me appreciate Spider-man's improvements to dynamic dialogue. I wish I could fly around while having these conversations. Being forced to sit through dialogue after dialogue just to hear "We have to stop Scarecrow" being repeated is killing me. I would say 30-40 minutes of my 3 hours have been simply sitting motionless while dialogue occurs. I understand that setup needs to be done for the story, but both Arkham Asylum and City knew to step aside (at least initially) to let you have some fun. I hate fighting one group of guys guys, then being stopped to hear four lines of dialogue, rinse, and repeat. I know that's the "formula" of Asylum and City as well, but it felt like the ratio of doing nothing and actually playing the game was better. On the positive side? Wow this game still looks amazing. I cannot believe it came out nearly a decade ago. It was the game that made me excited for the possible graphics of future PS4 and XBox One games, and I don't think a single other game got near this level of fidelity until Red Dead 2.
I really loved asylum, and really liked city, but I hated Arkham Knight. I remember the car sections being a huge slog to get through. I'm not even sure how far I got I just remember saying fuck this game and stopped playing.
That's fair. I remember hating the batmobile because unlike the gliding, it was forced and restricted your movement. Currently, I haven't hit a point where I'm going "why did they do this?"... yet... but that's because I remembered one specific spot which was a massive cause of frustration my first playthrough and was able to breeze right through it now that I knew what to do.
I'm hoping that Arkham Knight has a "glow up" and that my initial feelings about it were simply because I was expecting what Arkham City did to Arkham Asylum all over again. At the moment, new things are irritating me though, and old things, while not AS irritating, still remain. If I had to give ratings to each game, just based off of their first hour, I would say:
At the 3 hour mark, it looks more like this:
My complaints in my previous comment were legitimately everything I had issue with in Arkham City. And I can confidently say that "cliche" dialogue is something I just expect with superheroes haha. Arkham Knight feels like I am Batman... in the sense that it just feels like a job... I am constantly going through the motions. Fight, talk, increase in story tension, get new ability, tutorial on ability, repeat.
The first two games felt like metroidvanias, while Knight feels like a 3rd person adventure game in the style of (the new) God of War, without the same dynamic storytelling.
Last Epoch currently has my attention. My youth was spent playing Diablo 2, I have 15k hours into Path of Exile, and have really been enjoying Last Epoch. I won't speak on the server issues because those will pass.
Their social hub needs work, you have to connect your steam account to your LE account but it doesn't integrate your friends list so you have to manually invite everyone to be friends again, except the friend add is only 1 way, so your friend also has to manually add you back, instead of accepting an invite or something similar. No guild/clan functions. Since it isn't crucial to the game, I am not going to score this to protect the overall grading curve, but if I were to score social systems it would be like a 2 or 3.
Combat/Skills - 7.5/10
Combat feels pretty good and fluid, I haven't yet played a build where I thought "man this is clunky" because they give you enough tools to mitigate that type of thing. I think it's a little "floaty" but the impact is good and I enjoy it so far. I wish there was a default dash or dodge roll, but most classes have some kind of travel skill so it's whatever.
Skills feel nice but I wish you weren't so penalized for respeccing points, I know they quickly level up but I'd rather have some kind of currency or system that I could build up respec points instead of gimping the build entirely when you want to change up your build.
Campaign - 6/10
Story line, as someone who has played through the campaign 4 or 5 times, is probably fine lore-wise and it's a cool idea but it's just flat out confusing. With D2 and PoE, I know if I'm in act 2 or 5 or whatever. In Last Epoch, I have no idea what's going on. I'm just kind of following the gold quest marker and hoping I am doing it right. Maybe I'll get used to it but for the moment I'm not a fan of the travel map or the overall way the campaign works.
Endgame - 6/10
I think they have amazing roots and foundation, they just need time to add content. Current end game is very 1 dimensional.
Crafting - 8/10
I'm really enjoying the crafting, though it is also fairly sparse in terms of systems and mechanics. I think once they get a few cycles under their belt, their crafting system is going to the moon.
Trade - 9/10
Their trade factions are an amazing idea and I love what they're doing here. Great idea though it probably needs balancing cause CoF seems just insane to not take.
Overall the game gets a 7.5/10 from me. Diablo 2, imo, is an 8 and PoE is a solid 9+, Diablo 4 is like a 5/10 at best, so it's doing extremely well for this being their first game. I am extremely excited for the future of LE.
Also love Last Epoch. Bought it on a lark at some point early in Beta and haven't been disappointed.
I think one of the best parts is how responsive EHG is to feedback and communicating with their community.
True enough. At least you eventually get to the point where your minimum level for skills is 17 making switching builds pretty trivial when you're most likely wanting to change a build, at least in my opinion.
I feel bad about the community and the backlash behind the launch. Like, I get it, it's nearing day 6 and they're still having issues, and the core community is understanding, but it's sad to see all the terrible messages they're getting in discord and everywhere else. It's sad that they had to restrict their devs from the discord due to the extreme amount of negativity.
To those people I would say the answer is simple: refund your game, go outside, touch some grass, enjoy some sunlight and come back and buy the game when it's stable. No need to lose your mind over a video game and threaten and harass these people.
It's a shame but I also hope those people don't come back to the game. I find the LE community to be awesome. Before launch I could always ask questions in general chat and get good answers and help.
Discord is just a cesspool.
I've been in the deepest throes of a Factorio addiction over the last 6 weeks after being gifted the game by a friend and have put about 100 hours in so far. By my 75th hour I had a fairly well optimized, fully automated factory and was within the final stages of research when I started playing around with circuits... Now my factory sits collecting dust while I create music machines. It began with replicating Beethoven's short and relatively simple Écossaise WoO 86 but has now evolved into an attempt to recreate the third movement of his Tempest sonata.
Surprisingly the dulcet tones of my music machines appear to have placated even the primitive Biters... though that may only be a side effect of my mothballed factory that is no longer polluting their habitat. The music must flow.
Balatro, which is great (I commented on other post here).
Also Tetris Effect, which I got on sale for $20. It's "just Tetris", but I personally prefer to pay for a product that works and is high quality rather than hack together some free solution. And they really do put effort into making it worth your time: theres lots of beautiful visuals and music, and over a dozen different games modes. I beat "Journey Mode", which is their campaign, and have been playing the standalone "effect modes" since. They've got regular Tetris, literal classic Tetris (including choosing between speeds simulating several og systems), and a bunch of fun game modes with different quirks (I like mystery, which is regular Tetris except they occasionally fuck with you in different creative ways). There's also a whole slew of competitive modes with ELO rankings I haven't tried yet.
Overall, would recommend on sale at least if you enjoy Tetris, they do try and give you as much extra sauce as they can.
If you've never tried Tetris Effect on a VR set, I think it was originally designed as a VR title. It's an incredible experience, not that you're really missing anything playing on a flat monitor, but I really feel like it enhances the experience a lot. I might break out my Quest 2 now that you mentioned this so I can play through it again lol.
I just finished the main story of Pokémon FireRed/LeafGreen this weekend and I liked it very much. I've played some of the newer Pokémon games before, but I wanted to start playing the series from the beginning since I'd heard that the earlier games were supposed to be better. Instead of going for Red/Blue, however, I opted for the remakes (FireRed in my case), as I feared that the black-and-white of the original games might put me off, at least on my first playthrough of the region.
Perhaps controversially, I decided to strictly follow a walkthrough. This might be off-putting to people who prefer to discover things on their own, but after some thought and trying both ways, I came to the conclusion that I prefer to follow a guide, as I don't enjoy getting stuck and not being able to progress without help (which happened a lot), or missing out on certain Pokémon that I could catch in the wild. I think this playstyle provided some structure and allowed me to play in a more organized manner, which I feel suited my goal of playing for story first; it didn't ruin the fun for me at all.
I chose Bulbasaur as my starter Pokémon because I was curious to see what it could do as a grass/poison type, and I made sure to catch a Pikachu early in the game :D Progressing through all the gyms felt really rewarding, and I enjoyed the Team Rocket side story. I didn't feel the need to grind at all, perhaps because Bulbasaur provided the easiest experience, although I would have liked to have had the Exp. Share much earlier instead of constantly having to switch out low-level Pokémon during battles so they could gain XP and level up.
I especially liked the simplicity of the Kanto region; it has a very honest and cozy feel to it. The rival's constant smugness, even after losing, is also pretty funny, haha. And I appreciated the mysteriousness with which the Legendary Pokémon were introduced; it made those battles feel much more meaningful. The only rather big thing I didn't care for was the fact that you can't catch all 151 Pokémon without trading with others. I initially wanted to complete the Pokédex, but then I saw that certain Pokémon are only available in one game version, and since I was playing alone in an emulator, it seemed more trouble than it was worth. You can also only get one of the Legendary Beasts (Entei in my case), but since they're from a different gen, I don't think it's too bad. I'm rather disappointed that Mew is only available through an event, though.
Still, I really enjoyed playing through the game, and I kind of just want to roam around with my Pokémon team now (and maybe start reading the manga to get a better feel for the world) before moving on to the next game in the series.
The remakes SoulSilver and HearthGold are, in my opinion, the best Pokémon games ever (Black/White 2 are strong contenders iirc).
So I'm actually playing a Nuzlocke run in FireRed right now! I grew up playing Red, but I don't know that I would like that version when FireRed is pretty good. I used a randomizer to turn off trade evolutions. So Pokemon like Haunter have a set evolution level instead.
I'm glad you liked it though. Exp. Share was introduced later than the original Red/Blue. So switching Pokemon is an authentic experience lol
So I used to play on an emulator on my phone. There was a way to change the file name of the game from LeafGreen.whatever to FireRed.whatever and it would switch the game but keep your save. You could try that method if you wanted to get all of the pokemon.
I've gone back and played goldeneye 007 on Xbox. Man that game was so great, but the enemy mechanics are so broken. Shooting an enemy that's dying does not let the bullets pass through, but enemies behind them can shoot through them. Has really ruined a few of my runs so far. Either way, it takes me back to a simplier time and I've been enjoying it
Quite literally the only game I've played since the last thread is Balatro. Now that Helldivers 2 is actually working again for most people, I still haven't gone back to it because Balatro. It was mentioned elsewhere in the thread, as well, but it's a very addicting and very well made deck builder roguelike that has a playing card/poker theme. The presentation and theme is amazing and the gameplay itself is amazing. The risk/reward system is perfectly balanced and you don't really feel like the game is cheating you. You definitely have runs you know you have to reset, but I'm used to that from playing games like FTL, where if you don't get a certain amount of resources in the first system, you know it's just not worth it to continue. To be honest, I can't think of a single negative thing about the game, it's just extremely well made and it's right up there with some other roguelike legends for me, like Slay the Spire, FTL, and Isaac. It's a cheap game, it's definitely worth picking up if you're at all into roguelikes and/or card games.
Something I potentially want to play is Pacific Drive. I'm a hobbyist car mechanic, so the parts of the game where you're upgrading your car look intriguing to me, but I despise survival and crafting games. There is not a single crafting game I've ever enjoyed, I even refuse to touch the simple crafting that Fallout 4 has when I play that. It's a shame, because I think I would love the world and the mystery around the exclusion zone. I am seeing people say it's a good entry into the genre, I just don't want to pick it up for $30 and not play it when the crafting turns me off.
Last week I bought then refunded Helldivers 2. They've continually dropped patches and they had a big one Friday to address login issues and server stability. I really wanted to play with my brothers so I purchased it again and have thus far had no issues getting into the game and matchmaking.
It's been a lot of fun. As advertised the best aspect become apparent when you and your group are playing right at or just above your skill level. Barely scraping by. It reminds me of original Left 4 Dead days which my friends and I played constantly. Laughing at how bad the situation gets, improvising, just trying to survive.
The game play is snappy, environments are atmospheric and well rendered, weapons feel punchy, strategems are powerful and their cooldowns feels balanced. I've only really come across one toxic player who would steal support weapons other's called down. The battle pass and ship progression feel well tuned. You can pick up an upgrade consistently after several games.
There is a premium currency that unlocks a premium battle pass, but just playing the game and exploring I've accrued about 1/3 of the amount necessary to unlock that battle pass or I could buy an item or two out of the premium store. I definitely don't feel paywalled and the stuff in there looks cool but not necessary to git gud.
HOping to play more with friends and family. That's where it really shines.
I'm playing SW KotOR 2 for thrid week in a row. I have written about the game in previous threads, so I will be short this time. In my opinion, this is the best Star Wars game up to this day. I love games like Baldur's Gate and I also like sci-fi and this game just managed to connect the two into one and what emerged was perfect game. It may bot have the best graphics or dubbing or whatever, but it still plays grrat and givesme the same enjoyment as it did back in the day.
I'm thinking about next game to play. It will likely be either Zelda BotW or Witcher 3. Both will be replays, I played and finished them in 2020. I just can't pick... And sine it will be 150+ hours game, I should pick wisely. Any ideas?
Why do you think Kotor 2 is better than Kotor 1. I've only played 2 once like 17 years ago, and found myself not liking it as much as the original so I'm just curious.
But I would kill for a Kotor sequel. If you want another Star Wars game, I would highly suggest Star Wars Fallen Order. It's on the more difficult side, but it's a great game with an awesome story. I did not find myself enjoying Jedi Survivor as much as Fallen Order though. It got quite frustrating and the story was lackluster imo.
I've played firsz one a few times (say 5) recently and now when I play the second one (after almost 20 years of previous playthrough), I feel like there is more just to do. I'm not soeaking about story here, but KotOR 2 seems just more streamlined to me. You have better customization of weapons and armor, I also think you have more to choosefrom (dark/light side) and the game just feels a bit bigger (feels bigger doesn't actually.mean it is bigger).
If we go for story, then yeah, KotOR 1 might be better. But as overall experience, I like to play KotOR 2 more.
I have just glanced at Jedi Survivor and given I don't havepowerful enough PC, I didn't bother researching more about it. Looks good, I can't really say more. But I wanted to thank you for your opinion on it. I might skip it for Fallen Order - I will definitely have a look at that one.
Thanks for the explanation, I might need to go back and explore Kotor 2 again once summer rolls around and I have more time.
And yeah, the events of Jedi Survivor are kind of based on Fallen Order since Survivor is the sequel, but it has a totally different story and I just felt like the story made no sense at all. Fallen Order happens bot long after the events of the prequels, while Survivor is a few years after after Fallen Order. Survivor adds some good QoL changes, but just gets lost in itself in terms of plot. If I pick up Kotor 2 again, I'll be sure to circle back and let you know what I think!
I just wanted to let you know that thanks to your mention I bought Fallen Order.
Even though I despise launchers and other things (like always online) that are put between the game and its player, for 4€ I will give it a try. It should also run great on Steam Deck.
Nice, let me know what you think! I enjoyed it quite a bit.
I will. You will have to wait for it though. I jus started Witcher 3 and I don't play two games at a time (especially two story heavy ones). Since I want to kinda 100% Witcher, I guess you won't hear from me for another, say, two months :-)
But I'm looking forward to play Fallen Order. It looks great ans hopefully has great story, too!
I picked up the Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe on sale. It's my first time playing the game since the original 10 years ago (I first stopped by the original to get the 5 years badge in case the expansion messed it up but they're separate games from a trophy standpoint)
Overall, I enjoyed the update. I played it blind for about 5 days before looking up the endings I had missed. I'm glad i did because I missed several good ones.
The new ending which I liked best
Of the new stuff, I most enjoyed the Skip Button ending the best. I find myself thinking about the dialogue (I let nearly every track play through) and the events days laterQuick take on the modified endings
The bucket endings were fairly enjoyable - my favorite may be the Out of Bounds ending for the sheer absurdity of it but its hard to choose one. Countdown, Confusion, Mariella and Apartment endings all stick outMaybe I'm out of touch but, at the regular price, I would feel a bit underwhelmed with the amount of new content. The sale price feels like a fair compromise. There's certainly enough to keep fans of the original entertained and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys the original, walking simulator games or games with little to no 4th wall
Obligatory THEB ROOM CLOSET ENDING WAS MY FAVRITE!1 XD
Been a bit all over the place, but my mainstay for the past several weeks has been Advance Wars 2. It's perfect on a little emulation handheld where I can fire it up, take a few turns and then put it down for a spell before returning; really fits into my life right now.
That said, when I've had time to game, I've been spreading myself around a bit.
Elden Ring I'd been playing here and there after previously playing late last year, but I'm beginning to feel frustrated with it more than anything. My first Souls game was Dark Souls when it first released in 2011 or so on PC and I've played 2, SotFS & 3 extensively, completing the first game and 3, but Elden Ring is starting to get my goat. Frankly, a lot of the bosses (I just fought Black Blade Kindred) feel like utter bullshit. In the other Souls games, I often will ram my head against a boss and I feel like I'm able to analyze my performance and see what I've done wrong, but in Elden Ring, I often just feel frustrated with many of the bosses and areas. It seems like so many of the bosses are simply one hit kills, with unreadable windups (as they jump through the air), enormous health pools who track you around the arena with their attacks. I end-up just feeling frustrated with the game and not wanting to play, which hasn't happened with any of the other Souls games. I'll probably go back to it, as I do like exploring, but I'm definitely a little unhappy with it right now and I feel like this aspect of it isn't talked about much.
That said, due to my frustration with Elden Ring, I just picked-up Lies of P; I had been thinking about it for awhile and between the sale on Steam and my frustration with Elden Ring, I figured I'd give it a try. I've only played about 2-hours so far, but it seems neat. I wish I had more control over customizing my character (even though it's not important and I never pay that much attention to it in Souls), but the early area of Krat seems cool and the initial boss was challenging, but I did feel like my repeated failures on it was due to my own poor play and not that the boss was bullshit, so that's nice.
Lastly and I don't know when I'll have time for it, but I just watched Dune for the first time last night and I really loved it. Due to this, I decided to install Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak; I've owned it for I don't know how long, but have never even touched it. I don't have anything to say really, as I've only installed it and not even started it up, but I'm hoping to have some time with it soon, though I'm struggling with time to game as is, so we'll see.
How much VIG do you have? If you don't have at least 40 you're just playing a suicide simulator. HP is FAR more important than good equipment.
Black Blade Kindred is also a very hard type of boss (Gargoyle) plus a very hard hitter. He has as much health as some of the final bosses. It may be that you've attempted him too early?
One with thing with Elden Ring versus other souls games is you're expected to level up. If you're having trouble with an area, gain a few levels or come back to it later.
I'm currently level 80, but it makes sense that he was wrecking me so hard, as yes, I've largely ignored Vigor due to my being a pure Sorcerer build. I'm currently sitting at a piddling 18 Vigor for 516 HP.
Honestly, it hadn't really felt like much of a problem up until this point. I'm generally pretty damned good at dodging, having played Sorcerer all through Dark Souls 3 + DLC, as well as DS2: SotFS. Though, part of my problem may be that I'm currently playing more Fashion Souls and haven't attempted to get below the Medium Roll I'm currently sitting at.
That said, I do still believe that BBK is a bullshit boss; with gobs of health, tracking attacks and the like, it's a recipe for frustration. Frustration isn't something I've really felt much in the prior games, so it feels entirely new for Elden Ring and I've been trying to pinpoint the reason; that said, low Vigor may play a part...
I'd like to reiterate the importance of Vigor in Elden Ring. At least 40 and preferably 60 for a smoother gameplay. Take off any Soreseals you may have equipped too, they're great early but fall off quickly when the increased damage taken actively starts killing you. Without a Soreseal and at least 40 Vigor I don't think there's anything that will one-shot you at that point except maybe Waterfowl Dance, a move which I consider out of place in Elden Ring. But that one is entirely optional.
At times the game suffers a bit from the addition of Sekiro-like bosses without a reliable parry method to deal with them, so it feels like there's more nonsense than other Souls games but Elden Ring gives you more tools to either brute force them or you can take an entirely different approach because respeccing is far more lenient in Elden Ring than ever before. Considering that from roughly the halfway point the bosses are increasingly resistant to Faith, it's not a bad idea to move away from that damage type and move into something else.
I just responded to the other comment, so I won't reiterate here, but I do feel like Elden Ring suffers from poor boss design in the respect that you can "Brute Force" various bosses. It seems like a lot of the times the summons are designed purely to get around some bullshit boss design in the fact that the summons are there primarily to distract the boss so you can get some hits in; I don't necessarily feel like I'm strategizing and often feel something more like relief that I'm over a speedbump when I beat a boss, rather than in prior games where I felt like I overcame a challenge.
I still like it and I absolutely want to play some more, but my frustration levels were pretty damn high when I made that post and I still largely feel how I already had, in spite of wanting to keep going.
I love Fromsoft games, particularly the soulsbourne genre and Sekiro and I agree.
I've always loved that Fromsoft made the enemies strong, but felt balanced within the same realm of gameplay mechanics that your character is bound to (with occational slight deviations which feel story/character appropriate overall).
I'm concerned b/c it seems lately they're getting further away from that just for the sake of difficulty.
After beating some of the demigods, my character is supposed to have gained enough runes that, for most builds, you'd think we'd be closer in ability to npcs of a similar caliber across the board.
Instead I feel like I do chip damage while they do chonk damage (slight exaggeration, but you get my point). The difference in stamina and general character mobility is pretty crazy too.
This dissonance is jarring to me and ruins an otherwise beautifully harmonious game.
Yes, this exactly.
The bosses are more difficult in Elden Ring, but it all feels artificial with their inflated health pools, unpredictable attacks and gratuitous tracking; this is the source of my frustration with it.
I want to be clear that I don't think it's a bad game by any means, but I feel that it fails to live-up to the legacy of From games, as far as boss design goes. My friend did point out that the original Dark Souls had some bullshit bosses, like the oft maligned Capra Demon, but in large part everything felt doable on your own as long as you were smart enough and skillful enough.
Couldn't agree more!
Also want to acknowledge the exceptions, like those you mentioned, to the general trend I referred to for prior Fromsoft games. The exceptions definitely exist lol.
I have been playing Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered. I actually owned the original games, but after hearing a lot of good things about the Remaster I gave it a shot. Turns out, they just hired a bunch of fans and modders to work on it and it turned out great. I remember being filtered as a kid by the maps, and it took a moment to get used to the controls, but it's amazing how smooth it feels for a platformer with tank controls. Just beat TR1, having a blast so far. My biggest critique is the new graphics can be a bit hit or miss, like they didn't even test some of it. What were they thinking with the Cistern keys.
On the side I also recently started a playthrough of Paper Mario. I haven't played it since I was a kid, and wanted a game a bit more relaxing. Also, I am almost done going through Grim Fandango. Grim Fandango has been pretty reasonable for a puzzle game and the only thing I have had to actually look up was
spoiler.
ripping the damn boat in half.I need to figure out spoiler tags before I go taking about Red Dead Redemption 2 in more detail but the main point is, the big "I was a bad person" moment that's been brought up for all of Chapter 6... I never really did that. Since the game forces you to throw one punch, that's all I did. Yet "I beat a man to death" that's been haunting Arthur - does he remember that I mashed "threaten" until the game gave me no choice?
I guess it's like in Spec Ops: The Line, except Spec Ops wasn't a 70 hour game!
I'm almost through with the game, on the last mission (thank you Steam Deck suspend mode), but life won't give me the time right now to just finish it off.
Actually, come to think of it, Red Dead 2 is a lot like Spec Ops. Tons of choices that don't really matter, a linear story that pushes you down an exact path, all wrapped up with repetitive gameplay loops... And I enjoyed them both. Though, maybe I won't 100% RDR2.
XFigure -- I've been playing a very old, windows 3.1 game. It's an "arithmetic crossword" puzzle. It's short, it's diverting. I wrote a little bit about it here, including a complicated way of getting it running and then a much easier way of getting it running. https://danbc.neocities.org/xfig
The retro-exo projects are great if you are into old DOS and Windows games! I think there is a Windows 9x project underway as well.
Looking through the titles and trying to remember what I played as a child was definitely an amazing experience - do note that there are thousands and thousands of titles however, and if you go through the whole list your wife / husband may feel like you are ignoring them. 🙂
https://www.retro-exo.com/
I recently got HyperRogue.
It's a great turned based puzzle game. You collect items and the more you collect the more monsters spawn and if they hit you before you hit them, you lose. Simple concept but the 'board' shape makes it very unique.
Solium Infernum-
It’s a remake of an old game and I think it’s much better for a lot of little reasons. Turn based strategy but not an empire builder like civ.
The theme and gameplay is you’re an arch fiend of hell fighting the rest to take over. It’s all about backstabbing, deceit, and bullying tied up in a very literal infernal bureaucracy that limits your actions so you have to figure out what’s most important.
Diplomacy and Stellaris nexus are the closest comparisons but it’s really its own thing. It’s all about doing crazy things in different ways and adapting to it and it’s very very clever in how they designed it. Also supports async multiplayer so you can be in multiple games at once. Turns can be set to take minutes or days depending on schedules which helps keep people playing.
Also the art and flavor of everything is fantastic.
The only larger issue right now is if you’re decent at these games the AI doesn’t have difficulty levels but I do believe they’re working on getting it better. There are however single player scenarios for all 8 archfiends to get you used to their strengths.
Other common complaints have been that the ui is clunky in a few spots and some people don’t like the archfiend models , but if anything about this description interests you at all I strongly recommend checking it out
Got 2 games for this week, first up is Pacific Drive, which is basically part extraction game (like escape from tarkov), driving game, and car mechanic simulator.
I often see it called a roguelike and... I don't it's quite one? That or extraction games have grown enough to be considered their own genre. Granted, RL is a messy genre to define...
So the loop is going out from junction to junction, stopping wherever you see something you could scavenge, deal with anomalies as needed (in most case, dodge, but some can be useful at times, and others are outright helpful), can fix up your car as needed (at minimum, that means keeping an eye on the fuel gauge and maybe the battery, but depending on the situation you might have to heal, repair a malfunction, or outright swap parts as needed).
Once you're done scavenging, pick a Gateway far enough away from you to trigger and DRIVE as a radiation storm comes in to try and cook you.
That's the basic version, but put them together with some of the other stuff both in that list and out (like quirks, or that you're on a timer most of the time) can quickly make things become chaotic just often enough to warrant your full attention at all times on runs.
I'll note that I only got most of the Outer Zone unlocked (haven't gone into the Mid Zone at all yet) and haven't done a high instability junction either, but judging from it's most common modifier's name, just add a rapidly closing in storm of doom.
The other game is World of Warships: Legends, which is... well, an arcade naval battle game, and isn't new to me, since I played it a lot a few years back.
The game itself is fun (when sky cancer isn't around, and we only have to deal with one, PC isn't that lucky), if you can take a joke (as an example, a staple of Wargaming titles is the Lemming Rush: a bunch of players follow another player until they find even just one enemy and just... stop, completely unwilling to fight an enemy they usually outnumber. They usually also lose to said enemy. The most notable part of this is, it can still happen here, even though the spawns are very clearly cut into center and 2 flanks).
Just... man is it monetized hard (premiums often go for 40-60 bucks when converted from monopoly money, premium time gives added credits and XP letting you progress faster, and might be needed to draw a profit from higher tier battles, dear god the lootboxes, and of course there's a battlepass and time limited events and you can't progress both at the same time). But then it's just how Wargaming does it. Works well enough for them I suppose.
I would be willing to pay for a game like it, just full premium (and ideally with a good AI).
Update: This week's pass had 20 Detected in the challenges... *Picks sole valid Aircraft Carrier in the lineup* I'm doing this unwillingly.
And sure enough, 6/7 detects per game, among the last one to die, with 2 drops per squadrons. Least that was T5 ACs, the T7/Legends are worse to fight off.
On better news, Trackmania recently (re)added the Rally car from TMO, the new "environment" is a castle (no new surface, it's just a new look for the existing ones), and the car is exactly what you'd expect from a rally car: high acceleration, grippy and twitchy (I think it has the lowest grip roll speed atm), which makes playing it on keyboard Fun. In the dwarven way.
At the same time, Action Keys (meant to limit turning input so kb can have some the the granularity to gamepads) were updated... for gamepads, turning from a steering lock (full range as usual, anything above X% is ignored) to a re-range (range goes from neutral to X% at max). This came after they reduced AK cause it was too much too keyboard. It very much is controversial (and don't like it even though it actually helps me since I'm on Steam Deck).
My three podcast co-hosts and I recently played the very popular roguelite city builder Against The Storm and were very mixed on it.
I found the city building part to be very interesting once you get over the learning curve of how all the systems operate. The game does take a very long time to play each run, though, averaging between 45 to 90 minutes even on triple speed. There's a lot of interesting choices to make with how to win each settlement between fulfilling orders from the Queen, cracking open supply caches on the map, or focusing on your population specifically.
The major hinderance to Against the Storm is everything outside of the city building part. It feels like there's been a tremendous amount of energy put into the art direction and bits of story and lore throughout, but it's never connected or capitalized on. The titular Queen you're serving is someone that no one knows anything about and you never see during the game. The meta-goal of "what am I building these cities for exactly?" isn't really explained or rationalized. And I think the worst part is that there doesn't seem to be any kind of victory or catharsis in the game at all. You beat a settlement and you move on to the next one. You beat the seal and finish a full run, but you hit a button and start it all over again?
I like a lot of the flexibility and systems design in Against the Storm, but the rest of the game, including the hard-to-grok tutorial really makes for a hard headwind even for people who are big fans of other similarly complicated games like Rimworld or Factorio. I feel like those figured out tutorialization and emergent gameplay or victory conditions in a more straightforward fashion.
Given the furious pace of development, it wouldn't shock me if Against the Storm had some kind of major overhaul or refactor or content update to smooth out all those things. I think the game has some good foundations to it, but just needs some more time to bake.
Cyber Hook
I was looking for a 2D action game to play and somehow I found this game instead (link to bundle with DLC that's cheaper than just the game by itself). It's sort of in the same vein of Neon White speedrunning but instead of being in heaven you're in cyberspace, and instead of different guns you have a grappling hook. Very inexpensive and I have had fun so far (just half an hour).
Ultimate Railroads
Played the German expansion again, which seems to be our pretty clear favourite due to all the choices it opens up. This time my opponent seized the opportunity to do a strategy I often go for (quick 9-train idea card and spaces that give you point income for basic track + train), and I decided to try an all-in Industry strategy (after buying an engineer on turn 1 that gives you an industry track advance + 3 points) that ended up paying off. I unlocked my second, and the third industry markers from an Idea space and a German expansion tile. I ended up getting one marker to the end, and the other two made it to the furthest factory (2 spaces away from the end)...which happened to be the 10 factory that gives you an Idea...something I sorely needed as the tiles I took didn't have Idea spaces on them!
PARKS: Nightfall
I'd played the base game on Tabletop Simulator years ago and in person maybe once. Both times I feel like I wasn't in the right headspace for it. Overall I think the game is actually pretty solid. You progress 2 hikers along a trail. You can't go to an occupied space (unless you use your once-per-season campfire) and you can't go backwards, but you can jump as far forward as you want. So the tension is, do you leap forward to grab the resources or the minor end-of-trail bonuses, or mosy along and pick things up one resource at a time? And how long can you occupy a valuable space, forcing your opponents to spend their campfire or go around? You use the resources to collect gear cards that give you perks, and parks which can give you instant bonuses (maybe some resources back), and points.
I have to complain a little bit about my luck in this particular game - feel free to stop reading :)
There are these Canteen cards that you can fill with Water, and get other types of resources out of them. They're face-down so you don't know what kind of resources you'll be able to get out of them. Since I got a gear card that let me generate more Water than usual I took the time to obtain some extra canteens, and ALL THREE were dupes of the same one - one that lets you exchange resources in your pool for different types. So you put a Water in, and then you can do some 1-for-1 swaps. Most of the canteens are resource-neutral - e.g. put Water in, get Tree out. One of my opponents even got one that spits out 2 Sun. But mine were all resource negative and basically redundant beyond the first. Gah!
In the end I tied for 2nd/3rd out of 3....I didn't realize it til now but I would technically be 3rd on tiebreakers. Womp womp.
I bought the Chaos;Head Noah and Chaos;Child double feature on Switch, and have been playing through the first of those two games.
Playing through the first ending of this game was pretty good. The story is really well written and the voice acting probably does a better job of selling the characters than any other example. The soundtrack is actually pretty fantastic but it’s very easy to overlook because of how subtle it is for most of the experience. It’s probably one of the most polished ADV games out there still.
Unfortunately after the first playthrough it unlocks the rest of the routes and the experience with them is rather poor. You basically have to play through the whole game over again. There is a skip function but it is slow when you consider you are skipping over thousands of words to get to where you want to go. More importantly, it’s very difficult to ascertain how to access any of the routes unless you have a guide to literally give you the answers. When you get to those routes it hardly feels worth it because frankly it gets tiring reading about how these young girls are all f’ed up. The game has a lot of gruesomeness and general negativity and the home stretch to 100% completion makes the expensiveness of it all just so much more apparent. I will be very upset if the true ending is actually worthwhile.
That being said I still wholehearted recommend this game. The story is really good and I love the miserable protagonist aspect. It’s just a really fantastically told story.