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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.
Balatro
I hopped on the tildes hype train for this game. Have played about 40h, have won runs with the 5 starter decks and the 5 you unlock from them. Haven't attempted higher difficulty yet. I've collected about 2/3 of the jokers and vouchers, and I think I'm just missing one spectral card apart from that.
It has the same property Slay the Spire has that is able to keep my attention for hours on end while I try to optimize a run. Sometimes it can get boring, your deck is consistent and you're just playing Flushes every turn and waiting for all your triggered effects to resolve. Sometimes your deck wants to do a specific thing and you spend a lot of turns discarding to try to find the perfect cards. I think different deck types and certain jokers make it more fun than others (so unlocking more of them is quite important). It's kind of interesting that you can skip a lot of fights at will, so you can speed through sections you know you're already strong enough to handle. Sometimes though it's still correct to grind them out because you can gain value in the fight by upgrading/obtaining money/cards/jokers.
On my last run I went out of my way to unlock some Jokers that require you to do some hyper-specific things: have a Jack that has the "golden" modifier and a "golden seal" on it, discard 5 Jacks all at once, discard a Royal Flush(!!). Was pretty cool to be able to do all of those.
The music is really good for the game. Hasn't become annoying yet despite me listening to it for hours (not the entire time I was playing, sometimes listened to my own music).
I don't think it dethrones StS by any means - the core fight/blind gameplay are totally different, and I think StS's combat is a lot more interesting and fun. But all in all I think it's a good game and well worth the 20 bucks.
You can always up the game speed for this! I play on 2x normally now just because it's just so slow sometimes.
Oh wow, it goes all the way up to 4x. Sweet! Thanks for the tip.
Yeah, I didn't think this was my kind of game but now I'm very into it. I've been playing "one more hand" for days now and keep getting deeper. It's a really impressive one.
Inscryption
I started this up last week and was immediately drawn in. The art design is compelling and interesting and moody. The mechanics of the card game are surprisingly robust. The escape-room aspects attached to it are interesting. The way it’s all cohesively conveyed is impressive.
On paper, the game is excellent, but I find myself avoiding going back to it. I think the game’s atmosphere is so well executed that it feels more stressful than it actually is. The game is essentially audio-visual anxiety. I feel funny when I play it, which is sort of exhilarating but also sort of draining. I suspect that the parts of my brain that try to be protective of my mental health (which is not so great at the moment) have subtly steered me away from it. Intellectually, I want to go back to it (and soon!) but in practice I’m genuinely not sure that I will.
It’s an odd feeling.
Inscryption!! I love this game!!! Haven't played it in a long time, but it's so good, totally one of my absolute favourites I've played overall. I distinctly remember genuinely dropping my jaw at some moments, actually so much fun the first time playing when you're confused and slowly trying to piece together the bigger picture. The mix of genuinely fun deckbuilder mechanics and totally creepy aesthetics are pulled off really well, but I can totally see it generating a more anxiety related and tiring response. I know I've felt similarly about games before (VR Roborecall, specifically), and even if I wanted on some level to play them, I just had a lowkey dread that would fill me at the thought of actually doing it again. Take some time if you need, play Stardew or something more lighthearted in the meantime :)
For what it's worth though, I'd really really encourage you to play more of it, whether that be now or when your mental state has improved.
I picked up The Invincible on Steam. It is a linear, first-person, story-driven, retro-futuristic exploration game set on a desolate, distant planet. It is based on a hard sci-fi novel by Polish writer Stanislaw Lem. I've long been meaning to read some of his work and it's been a real treat to read a few chapters of The Invincible book and to follow it up with playing the game.
The game is slower paced and more focused on exploration of the mystery of the desert planet (which I will not spoil). Suffice to say the alien environment looks absolutely beautiful and Stanislaw Lem's philosophical musings on man's place in the cosmos fit perfectly well into the narrative. It really scratches that sci-fi itch of wonder I've had ever since being a kid. The only other game that sort of compares is Outer Wilds. And I'm happy to say this game inspired me to read more Lem books!
This game is actually on my list. Games tend to ferment in there for a year or two and I'm always glad to see someone else validate the weird stuff that picks my interest since I otherwise tend to go in relatively blind. Can't wait to play it a few games from now!
I hadn't seen this game yet, but it looks right up my alley since I've been craving some fresh sci-fi alien planet goodness following the latest expedition in No Man's Sky. This game looks like a perfect fit, thanks for sharing! :)
Gran Turismo 4
It just came to my mind out of nowhere to check how PCSX2 is doing on Steam Deck. And voilà - found easy manual to set it all up. So I went to the garage, where I keep all my DVDs and Blu rays, found GT4 disc and after putting it in PC I realized I have already copied it looong time ago. Game itself - apart from tracks where you drive at night or with lights turned on, it runs prefectly ok. Oh and Nordschleife is a bit too much too here and there (framerata dropping a bit in some parts). The strangest thing is that when slowdowns happen, Steam Deck is still not doing much meaning it's not about not having enough processing power but rather slow emulation or something like that. And when we speak about power - Steam Deck can do anywhere between 4 and 7 hours in this game (depending mainly on if you race opponents or do licences and also screen brightness).
If you have never heard about Gran Turismo games - they are Playstation originals dating to PS1. GT4 has subtitle "The real driving simulator" and it sure was at the time (2005). They are not arcade games, they tend to be as much realistic as possible but not so much as some PC games do. GT games go far past the arcade but fall short of simulator. Still great to play as they can be really hard at times!
Having played all up to GT6, I believe GT4 is still the best. It could be superseeded by GT7 which I don't own but ayed a bit. Why GT4? In my opinion it has the best career mode out of them all.
Races are structured into many many different categories ranging from car manufacturer's (or specific type) race to national races (ie. only Japanese cars can participate) to begginer, pro, extreme (kinda difficulty and also power/speed categories) to dirt and snow races to endurance races. Yes, you will have to drive for 24 hours when you pick 24h race! Better invite some friends and make it a party!
Races are also structured "by type" meaning there are FF (front engine, front wheels powered), FR (rear wheels poeered), 4WD, NA (natural aspiration = no turbo cars), turbo cars, boxers (engine type), spider/roadster, small cars (by length), classics (by year, actually quite some races are limited by year)... You also can tune your car by buying "upgrades" that doesn't just simply put in more power but change the behaviour of car (less torque in lower RPM, higher RPM, turbo lag...) and you can tune things like transmission ratio (all gears selectively), shock absorbers with rife height etc., limited slip differential (so your wheels doesn't spin freely when taking turn under power) and many other things. There is tire wear built-in with many types of tires - norma to racing, economy to super soft. You wat to pick the softest but also don't wear them down fast.
Many of these things are in later games with man more added or touched up or refined. Some are lost in the sequels though... Licence trsts where you learn how to drive different cars in different sitations - there are 80 of these in GT4 and they are HARD! GT5 and 6 are much easier. There are also driving missions where you have to ie. overtake other car with your specific car in the next turn.
About cars... You will drive 30kW cars here as well as 700kW+ beasts ranging from kei cars in Japan (or even smaller and less powerful) through DTM and Japan championship cars to Group C Le Mans specials. Speeds will be attacing 400km/h and going over in a few races.
GT5 and 6 look better, have modern cars, have multiplayer (or rather had, servers are down) had new features and so on, but they lacked some charm and some things I love about GT4.
Oh nice, last time i tried gt4 on the deck it was a really bad experience with bad stutter constantly and maybe 20-30fps regularly. Definitely nothing smooth. Which was a huge bummer cause i had plans to crush that career mode since i had just played gran turismo on psp and done all the licenses (no career mode) so i thought gt4 would be a great next portable racer. Ill grab a pcsx2 update and try again!
Definitely give it a go. I hope you have PAL version because the game needs to run at full framrate (PAL 50, NTSC 60) so it's not slowed down. When stutters happen, it also slows down the ingame time. Worst races are Special Stage routes, Costa di Amalfi and sadly also Seattle and Twin Ring Motegi. It is playable on those, but you won't get full speed emulation in some corners.
Thinking about it - it slows down on more tracks, but it's not that noticeable - when it drops from 50 to 45 for half a second, you don't realize it as much as if it dropped to 35 for 5 seconds. I still have to do some high speed driving and cornering, as I'm nowhere near Le Mans specials... It may be game changer when you have to maneouvre through tight corner at 200km/h. You can try and see for yourself.
I played the Gran Turismo's a lot as a kid, culminating in GT4 being the last big one of my childhood. Didn't play 5 or 6, but came back in with Sport and then 7.
I played a lot of Sport but got tired of it pretty quickly, all the races are just the danged same. 7 inherits that same issue, every race format in singleplayer is that you start at the back, it's a rolling start, the cars in the back are slow and you overtake them easily, the cars in the very front are fast and you'll probably only catch up to them near the end. You tune up your car to make it faster and then you're faster than all the cars, and its barely a race. I only played a few hours of 7 when it was released, for that reason, I'm just tired of that being the only format of races in the game.
They've captured a lot of cool stuff like the graphics and the photo modes and the idea of the beauty of cars and the driving physics and stuff, but they seem like they barely care about the actual racing part of it. Comparing it to something like the F1 games (which I've barely played), where the racing and overall racing season is the entire focus, it's sad, why can't Polyphony take some inspiration from any other racing game?
Maybe it's better with multiplayer where you race against other humans instead of really shitty and robotic AI drivers, but I remember Forza 3 being way better about this -- in singleplayer and multiplayer -- way back in 2009.
I don't see myself getting another GT game (also I don't have a PS5 and probably won't buy a 6) unless they have a full blown revolution and make the racing part not so incredibly shallow.
That's sad to hear. I kinda thought GT7 might be the one to return to roots. Seems like it's not :-(
It weirdly is a return to GT4 in the overworld map, with the same idea of different stores and championships and things being icons on like a "neighbourhood map".
But the races themself, from all the ones I played and from what I could google at the time (on release), were the same as GT: Sport and very same-y.
I have seen he overworld map and a bit of tuning and raced a few, but I can see it becoming boring or a chore from your description. What a shame.
While my internet was down (just got it back) I fortunately had Jusant to play which I bought on the previous weekend, it being the cheapest of the games I wanted to play next.
You play as an unnamed young person who crosses a sunlit desert to arrive at a massive cliff that stretches all the way up into the clouds, known as The Tower. Throughout the game, you climb this spire higher and higher, encountering lots of constructions and clutter left behind by people who used to live on the rock faces but have all left/died off. You learn that The Tower used to be an island (lots of the crap people left behind had to do with the sea or water), but the sun "stopped moving" and the ocean receded and finally there was no drinking water anymore, but some people decided to climb higher instead of leaving, hoping to find the mythical "ballasts", floating sky whales full of water. Guess what, we have a magic horn for some reason and a little pet baby ballast! Maybe we can find the others!
It was generally a pretty good game, and let me say right off the bat I recommend playing it. It makes use of very complex, beautifully designed sets/levels/meshes allied to very understated texturing in the vein of various other "cool landscape exploration games" like The Pathless or Omno. The climbing mechanics are excellent, and despite some artistic license (this kid is a really damn good climber and I sure would love to own that magical evaporating rope) it really feels like climbing; you control the protagonist's two hands independently (QWOP-style, but very forgiving) and the rope functions as safety but can also be used to climb and lower yourself or to swing across distances; you can place up to three additional pitons anywhere on the rope and this affects rope physics. There's also a stamina mechanic, which requires resting and cautious use of jumps/heaving yourself. (Accessibility options allow turning some of these things off, but don't if you don't have to.) I also liked the sound design, including the findable shells that you can hold to your ear to hear soundscapes from the now-dead vertical villages from back when people still lived there.
Although there are lots of predefined spots for sticking your rope to initiate a climb (and you do this automatically if you, for example, grab a ladder), you can stick your rope on any vertical surface. You do need to do this to reach some locations/collectibles. However, things can get pretty janky if you try to climb where the game never planned you to, which is unfortunate and can impact immersion. You can get stuck in the geometry and have to reload from checkpoint. Speaking of which, checkpointing can be oddly... bad? Sometimes I came back the next day only to find I had to replay a few minutes of the game because it had inexplicably not saved my latest climb or two after I quit. I also disliked the one-way-only slides; Slides are generally visually cool but they prevented me from backtracking when I missed things, which was annoying.
The checkpointing wasn't the only weird issue. It kind of felt like a bunch of people really loved and believed in this game and gave it their all, but other participants half-assed their jobs? For example, I found the collectible "letters", which are our only understandable way of knowing wtf is going on (the plot), extremely disappointing. They're not entirely useless, but they're boring snippets of text all with the same sans serif aesthetic and a whole bunch of names of characters I have no way to associate with each other or anything else. This game was made by Dontnod, ffs. They're the masters of the high quality in-game journal, with sketches and images and cool looking expressive handwriting. What happened? Why was that missing entirely? Finding printed papers here and there, many of which are things that no one would ever write down, is basically the same as the tired, unimaginative "audiologs" mechanic, except without even the redeeming factor of voice acting - so, lazier.
There are other UI issues. At least you can keep track of the letters and there is a compass system for finding the shells. Other collectibles, like the stone cairns, are a complete question mark. You have no way of telling where they are and will only learn if you got them all from the achievement at the end, and if you missed any you'll never know where. It was never explained how to "acquire" the paintings for the gallery and I only figured it out after missing a few. Also, for a game where the incredible scenery is such a big draw, somehow there is no photo mode. The camera constrains itself to the best angles for seeing where you're supposed to climb to (very well, I should add) and, while you're climbing or near any collectibles or rope hooks, there are irremovable icons floating on top of everything. If you want to turn the camera, remove the icons or move your character off-center for a picture... Tough, you can't! Several other people have requested this feature, which seems very obvious to me, but radio silence so far.
This game was previously recommended to me by Steams discovery queue and I readily dismissed it after reading about the relatively short playtime and some peoples dissatisfaction with the ending. Though upon reading your review of it I am definitely intrigued once again and will look to pick it up when the sale price drops a bit further than it currently is.
To be fair, I'm not the type to be too bothered by games being relatively short (better short than bloated for no reason; I just noticed four more games in my list were released since I last checked, bringing my backlog of released games up to 16!) and I definitely did feel that detachment from the plot (though the ending made sense to me!) It's just that the game was pleasant to look at and fun to climb through. I wish they'd done a better job on those other points!
I've been playing through Pseudoregalia because of the new Humble Bundle and off of GMTK's small recommendation of it on one of his videos from last year. It's a really incredible love letter to Mario 64 movement, and feels really good to play, even with it's PSX style graphics. It's kinda confusing to move through the whole map though, but it's interesting to just kinda explore the world.
Helldivers 2 is what I've been going through with friends if I need something mindless to do. It's still incredibly fun and once you hit the higher numbers of challenges, pretty difficult too! If you liked DRG I think you'd like this.
Also kinda been getting back into Valorant for a couple of games. It's still fun to play but I feel like so much work to try and keep up. I should get back into the eSports side of things though.
Edit: oh and still going through Balatro, I'm at Purple Stake right now, but only on one deck! Didn't want to double post it since I talked about it last week too.
Pseudoregalia is such a fun interesting game. It’s so free-form that you can’t help but be interested in exploring in it, and there are moves in it that you can perform which are never explained to you but left for you to discover yourself. I hope the creator makes an expanded sequel.
I really like it a lot! It feels like it clicks similarly to the way learning how to cap jump in Mario Odyssey or super dash in Celeste. The world is really strange too. I kinda wish it was more clear where you were but as I understand it the map is a new addition to it, I'm surprised people beat it without a map, I can barely navigate even with it.
Oh Jesus. I can imagine no map probably means no fast travel and that would ruin the game for me.
Loool I don't think there's fast travel in Pseudoregalia sadly, unless I missed something :(
Sorry, I had somehow thought you were responding to my comment on Souldiers.
Pseudoregalia has a map???
They just added it a couple of days ago I think!!! Would recommend a revisit with it, I think haha.
Baldur's Gate 3
I started playing this around mid December, and haven't quite cracked enough to move on to another game, though I am certainly getting there. Currently on my second solo run, playing a dark urge resist Tav, and while it is still super fun most of the time I'm getting tired. I've poured ~350 hours into it so far, and am running out of steam I guess. Just into Act 3 now, and I think I'm just going to push myself through to the end so I can be finished with it and start playing something else, I'm not a fan of leaving games unfinished if I can help it.
That being said, this game is seriously really great. I was expecting I'd like it, even purposefully started playing after my final exams were done so I wouldn't have to worry about juggling it and schoolwork, but it seriously sucked me in like no game has for a very long time. I haven't felt very passionate about games for the last year at least, nothing in particular caught my interest in a super strong way, but I'm really thankful to really have had my love of games reignited due to BG3. Hell, it made me realize how much I actually enjoy writing, something I have very rarely done before, via (embarrassingly enough) fanfiction.
I'm planning on playing Slay the Spire after this, since I also have loved the few deckbuilders I've played before, and it's supposed to be the deckbuilding game. Very excited!
Still cracking away at Advance Wars 2; the mission I'm on is pretty damned challenging (Green Earth, Eagle trying to save Red...Moon (?) Sami), I've had many false starts on this mission, but finally made some progress and now hoping I don't get streamrolled by the AI, as they have a heap of units. Just need to hold out until I can start pushing back.
That said, I switch over from my Miyoo Mini to my Vita and I'm kind of wondering if I'm playing less carefully as a result. Reason being, I now have Rewind available to me, so I keep finding myself making dumb mistakes and rewinding to fix them. Didn't feel like I was really doing that when I didn't have access to Rewind, but otherwise I'm happy playing on my Vita for the time being.
Also making headway in Lies of P; just beat the boss King's Flame, which I bashed my head against about 10 times. Finally went back and upgraded my weapon a bit, as well as leveled-up and then managed to just barely beat him. One thing I dislike about Lies of P is that I feel like options as far as playstyle are more limited, versus something like Dark Souls, but maybe that's just me bitching because I generally like to play casters in these games. Also, I'm bad at blocking/perfect Guards; I can roll like a motherfucker, given all my training with casters, but I am very bad at timing blocks, so that can end-up being a little frustrating; seems like I'm hitting maybe 10% of the Perfect Guards.
I also finally tried out the Star Trucker demo and I have to say, it's great. Very up my alley, as a mix between American Truck Simulator and something like Elite or Hardspace: Shipbreaker. It's not really doing anything "new" per se, but what it's doing is fun and I like that I need to be maintaining my truck as I encounter hazards and make mistakes. Very much looking forward to the full release and I think it'll be a day 1 buy for me, though there's no date on it yet.
Pokemon TCG Live
so recently a friend got me into the pokeman card game by offering to build me a deck. i grew up on the original 150 and the tv show and collected and all that as a kid, but only ever 'battled' using house rules cause as a 9 year old that handbook was over my damn head. anyway, i learned that you can ~port~ the decks and booster packs you buy to the desktop game, and i've found that the game online is a great teacher for the rules irl. it's nothing fancy or new but it's very fun to reconnect with my kid self....and totally kick other peoples asses w/ my skillz.
anyone else casually play this?
Been playing Devil May Cry from the HD collection on my PS3. Also making my third attempt to play and finish Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. I'm currently unemployed, but I may be getting a job in a week or two. It has been 11 years since I got NnK and I'd really like to play it through this time.
Heh I've also tried and failed to finish NnK (I bought it during covid) and was just thinking about another try. I'm fairly sure Ive progressed through most of the story but I made the mistake of grinding too much at the beginning and every battle was a boring cake walk
How far are you in this playthrough?
I just beat the first boss (the rat). I will grind early on so that I can have an easy time later. I'm only here to experience the story. I don't care for a difficult game.
Super late to the game, but my kids finally got me into Minecraft and it's pretty much my ideal game. Lots of exploration. Little plot. Something new around (most) corners. I sorta knew that all these years, but finally stoped avoiding it.
Factorio
I eyed it up at least a year ago but passed on it because it seemed like too much money for what looks like kind of old style pixel art but brown depressing graphics. Kind of a bad metric, I know.
I bought it on a whim last week because my wife said she was looking for a new game she put a few minutes in and said no but it really sucked me in. I think the issue is that she wants to play on her laptop but ideally you want a mouse and keyboard. I might try to get her onto it on the steamdeck but we'll see.
It's an easy game to lose many hours to and if you do make it through to the end there's a lot of great mods that can extend it massively.
I'm on my 3rd attempt at Pyanodon mod, already over 100 hours in and still not even close to half-way through the tech tree.
Still playing Helldivers 2. Since they fixed it about 11 days ago it's worked flawlessly for me and boy is it a fun game. I've put about 12 hours in over the last 7 days which is a lot for me. The gameplay is fun, snappy, and weighted nicely. Difficulty levels are designed well so that it always feels like the sweet spot. The progression system still feels well tuned and I'm excite to upgrade my ship, strategems, and weapons.
I'm also happy to report the "premium" store is really optional. By playing the game I have picked up a good chunk of the premium currency but really nothing in the premium store would replace the things I've picked up in the free game pass. It's all slight variations on things you already get. Hopefully they continue with this design. I'd be happy to buy some sort of DLC but I really appreciate that player power (thus far) is disconnected from the premium currency.
It's the first time in a long while when I felt some level of adrenaline rushing through me while playing a videogame. It's super intensive, and there's a bunch of small details that I love - some environmental storytelling, but especially the barks of the soldiers. Holding down the fire button with a machine gun while the helldiver yells will never get old.
My gaming time has dropped a little bit in the last couple weeks, but I did pick up Expeditions: A MudRunner Game. It's been on my wishlist since it was announced. I'm into cars and I enjoy euro truck sim, but I had never played mudrunner or snowrunner as they looked a bit too complex for me, but Expeditions seems like a more forgiving entry point. I only have about 3 hours so far, but it's neat. The game pretty much just gives you objectives like "drive over there", "haul this big tool in your truck and use it on the x", "tow this abandoned truck back", etc. The challenge is navigating the terrain in a way where you don't damage or flip your truck, it's almost like a puzzle game. Thus far the game gives you enough resources to get out of binds (like jacks to let you reset if you flip over), but I'd imagine the "very hard" expeditions get pretty challenging. It's definitely not going to be for everyone and I can already sense I probably won't spend more than like 15 hours on it, but it's neat if you're into this sort of genre.
Otherwise, I'm continuing to lose my sanity to Balatro, but I've honestly been spending most of my time in the last couple weeks catching up on movies and TV shows rather than playing a ton of games. I will say that I'm starting to get that MMORPG itch again and begging every god that might exist to prevent me from redownloading World of Warcraft or FF14. The itch could be more RPG and less MMO, so I might do another playthrough of the Mass Effect trilogy to occupy some time and to make me stop buying new games that I don't actually need, lol (Expeditions, you're fun, but I super didn't need to drop $60 on you).
Nice, im still playing snowrunner but i like the, seemingly, simpler looking objectives in expeditions. Snowrunner kind of just dumps you into the experience with no way to even guess the complexity of tasks (to prioritize) so you have to try and fail before realizing you just dont have the equipment necessary. Its a really un-gamey game and it sounds like expeditions tries to fix that a bit?
Still love snowrunners, but it's definitely a game that hates you the player.
Yeah, Expeditions is a more gamey game, for sure. It gives you defined objective lists, map markers, and challenges. I do like sims, but Snowrunner is just a bit too much for me, I think, I still want clear tasks when I play a game.
I finally bought Hand of Fate II, a roguelike mix of third-person combat and card-based tabletop roleplay with a sinister dungeon master which I had been eying ever since the first one was released. It is pretty neat, only ... I can't play it. My 46 year old brain is simply too slow for the combat. At least, it feel like my age is the bottle neck here. Might be able to push through by getting my reflexes in order.
Solium Infernum-
Still my main focus. Been busing with IRL stuff so looking forward to having some time to hopping into MP. Really unique game and they cleaned up so much of the nonsense/frustrating stuff from the original game.
Dune Spice Wars-
Haven't played in awhile and am glad to get back in. Lots has changed for the better, and they'll be dropping Heroes of Dune soon, which was one of the main things I was waiting for.
I’ve been doing a challenge where I’ve been working through the alphabet starting with Z and getting the platinum trophy in a game whose name starts with each letter. This week, I got to P and found almost nothing in my backlog I was interested in, so I bit the bullet and bought Persona 5 Tactica.
I loved P5/Royale and really enjoyed my time with P5 Strikers and the switch to a frantic Dynasty Warriors-style game, so I was open to meeting up with some old friends for another adventure in strategy format and it’s just… Not hitting me right. Everything feels rushed and downgraded, the visual novel style just isn’t interesting to look at beyond the initial ‘Scott Pilgrim Vs The Metaverse’ vibes, the combat has been dumbed down to the point where things like elemental weaknesses or immunities are all but gone, and the story centers around a brand new character with the Phantom Thieves serving more as guidance counselors than as central figures who have strong personal thematic ties with the new kingdoms and their rulers.
I’m not hating it and it’s far from the worst game I’ve tackled during my challenge, but goodness am I ready to say goodbye to my friends in the Phantom Thieves and move on to new ground
This weekend I started playing Souldiers and it has turned out to be the kind of game that I can veg out to in a seriously worrying way. Yesterday I started playing it in the morning and ended up eating breakfast at 2PM.
It’s essentially a metroidvania with some very good combat mechanics and very pretty pixel art graphics. It’s got a very zoomed-out view which is perfect for the amount of flying around you are going to be doing. There is a story but I haven’t been moved by it yet; it’s got some interesting concepts but it is only barely paying off to something impactful at this point.
Unfortunately after reaching the fourth major dungeon the veneer starts to peel off. I had swapped the d-pad and analog stick because the game defaults to movement with the analog stick, because that control scheme sucks for 2D action games. This dungeon has bubbles that you can get into and use to launch yourself into any direction, but they can only be aimed with the analog stick. The dungeon also seems to be telegraphing what to do much worse than the others, which is sad given that it has been pretty excellent at doing that this far.
One of the best things about this game is that you have a choice of three classes to play as; a scout, an archer, and a mage, and they all appear to play differently from each other. This is utterly fantastic; I think my choice to play as an archer has really helped to make this game become so addictive; the combat is way different than playing as a close combat specialist. But there are some points where it seems that the game was not balanced to provide appropriate challenge, and in particular some of the environmental mechanics can be triggered remotely which doesn’t seem like it was really supposed to. One boss fight has you hitting a crystal to make walls to avoid being hit by a laser and triggering them remotely can cause them to show up in a place that will disadvantage you.
Overall, though it is a fantastic game. I’m surprised that such a generic looking title ended up being so good! If it were not in last month’s Humble Choice I would have certainly never have heard of it, let alone played it.
I should also briefly mention the music. It’s a bit difficult to describe simply because I haven’t heard much that has the kind of qualities it does. It uses sampled instruments with fairly short loops so it has an SNES-like quality to it. The instruments in front tend to be somewhat frilly and there’s a lot of flute sounds so it reminds me most of the soundtrack to Arcana. It’s very jazzy but never quite bombastic enough to distract you, which makes it perfect for this kind of game where you will hear the song for a long period of time. The jazz inspiration also helps it be interesting enough that you don’t get tired of it because it’s full of small details to listen to. And it’s all put together by a pretty good choice of instrumentation.
I have been playing the solo variant of the board game carcassonne! Hans im Gluck released it for free on their website, and it is a lot of fun to play solo. I have been playing a couple rounds a day, and have been getting mixed scores, 36 being my highest, which was actually the first game I played of it. I'm usually pretty bad with remembering rules for board games, but this one is actually sticking pretty well, probably because I have played a lot of carcassonne, so it has been making me feel pretty good about myself lol. I recommend it to anyone that has the board game!
Over the past weekend myself and some friends spent an absurd amount of time playing the final Tribes 3 play-test before its Early Access release next week. Amongst our group responsibilities were shirked, some significant others were partially ignored, laundry was left unfolded and then some... but it felt great to be skiing with the crew once more.
Online discourse around this game is sour to say the least as many Tribes fans, old and new, are seemingly a set of people mostly impossible to please. While the game is certainly rough around the edges, smaller in scope than ever before and very obviously is a repackaging of Ascends assets, we cannot say that we didn't have an absolute blast with it. Just to mention that four of us have been playing Tribes since Starsiege and two since Ascend, so take that how you will.
It didn't take long for us to settle comfortably into our old roles, our main defender tanking our flag with ease, the four soldiers providing midfield escorts while causing havoc in between and myself running the enemies flag like a spooked hare. Once we hit our flow state we became nearly unstoppable, to the point where we had to start splitting ourselves between the teams, understanding just how frustrating it can be to get rolled over and over again.
As far as recommending the game, well, I truly cannot say one way or the other. For old Tribes fans it will be hit or miss, if you hated Ascend and can't enjoy anything but T2 then you've already made up your mind anyways. If you're new to the world of Tribes, good at FPS games and interested in this then you should expect to be pitted against players with a massive skill gap and understanding of the games systems. But at least in my small group we haven't been this excited about a shooting game in a long, long time.
I either played or sampled several World of Warcraft private servers. The very fact that they work as well as they do, to the point of being barely distinguishable from official servers, never ceases to amaze me. I know that there are many technical reasons why those servers are possible, but either way, it's amazing. As far as I know, no one ever had access to all of Blizzard's source code, they worked from the ground up with the assets available to the client and proceeded to re-script the entire world -- its mechanics, functioning, and behaviors. WoW is not a tiny game to do that.
It usually takes some effort in curating addons and finding the right settings to make them look and feel right, but private servers such as Ascension, Stormforge, Tauri, and Turtle-WoW are remarkable. Other than the atrocious pings (God knows where those servers are located), once in there, I'm just playing WoW. Without paying a cent!
While some deny, those are for-profit enterprises (ChromieCraft is an exception. I haven't tested but it looks very good). There are cash shops, although, in many cases, they seem less predatory than Blizzard. In any case, much like Blizzard, their pay-to-win microtransactions are irrelevant if you don't care about being competitive. They're generally more "pay-to-advance" than "pay-to-win" per se, and most private servers have a higher XP rate so, as someone coming from Classic, even the free version feels like an upgrade.
Of those servers, Stormforge and Tauri are currently in Mists of Pandaria. Ascension is a very particular take on Vanilla since it's like a classless build where you can create any combination you want. Turtle-WoW is Classic+, a more conservative improvement to Vanilla.
I'm playing in Stormforge Mists of Pandaria server, which is largely a recreation of Blizzard's MoP. The XP rate is 3x, which makes things faster but also trivializes the world. I switch zones a lot to keep things interesting. Again, it is insane to me that, other than the absurd latency (which I can't really notice in the actual gameplay), this has no perceivable difference from Official WoW. The downside is that there are not a lot of people on the server right now -- I think it peaks at 3000. Which would be considered low for Official, but I do find groups enough times to not be a problem. I convinced a friend of mine to start playing, and the fact that it is free was essential for him to do so.
A problem with those servers is that they are way more multilingual than Official. So, besides English, you're going to see people speaking in Hungarian (I think, I can't really identify), Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, etc. Sometimes in the same guild. This can further divide servers that are not that populated to begin with.
Necesse It's a fun top down 2D open world crafting game. It feels like a bit like a mix of Terraria and Stardew Valley. It's still in early access, but it has a lot of content and pretty fun solo and co-op.
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon Pretty fun game, and the first AC game I have played in many, many years. It's honestly a bit more punishing than I'd like, but I think that From Software simply can't help themselves since they've become so enmeshed in the Souls games.
Unicorn Overlord (Demo, full game is out soon) This is essentially a brand new Ogre Battle game, but made by Vanillaware. It's great and I love it, but the demo only lets you play for 5-6 hours so I'm waiting on the full release to come in a few days.
Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth This is part 2 of the FF7 remakes. I am about 20 hours into it and I like it a lot more than part 1. The game is much more open world than the first game (probably more accurate to call it semi-open world) and there is a lot to do and find exploring around the regions. Liking it thus far.
Pacific Drive is a driving roguelite horror game that copied its homework from STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl.
It's kind of anxious and miserable - it's a very well done horror game, but aside from that the looting gets tedious and the gameplay loop goes as follows:
It has car-fixing stuff, which is kinda cool but honestly isn't that fun. A car part breaks, you think ugh and go craft a sealing kit or whatever, fix the thing, then leave. This gets "interesting" when you don't have the parts to craft the sealing kit, but honestly the more I play the more I find it a drag. It's not fun, except when you're driving.
The story is interesting and the characters are well done, and I've been wondering whether I should look up the rest of the story beats on youtube.
The driving has some really neat stuff though - for instance quite often you're following the map (which is a big screen mounted onto the passenger seat) and you're either really tempted or forced to go offroad, and going offroad is hectic. And at the end of a drive, you have to basically pick a spot on the other side of the map and commit to driving there while the world collapses around you, it's tense as heck and well done.
The problem is that the core gameplay loop doesn't involve much of that. Looting isn't actually fun, it's junk-food filler tasks.
The driving is a bit slow, which makes sense in a world built around stopping the car constantly to go loot stuff, but it takes away from the driving.
I like how you can look around the car and hit the Use key to interact with the stuff inside (the radio, the headlights, horn, windscreen wipers etc), it makes the car feel more real.
All in all, I'd recommend it if you want a horror game, but what I wanted was a more survival-focused Mad Max (2015) without the combat. Or in retrospect, keep the combat; at least Mad Max had something that wasn't looting. And the loot was all in the open; you hold the button-prompt to pick up the loot, instead of holding the button-prompt to open the container with the loot then hit
tto transfer all the loot to your inventory.Wrath: Aeon of Ruin came out of early access recently, and I installed it. I was enjoying it, but decided to wait for a patch that possibly fixes the weird stuttering I was encountering.
In the mean time I was looking for a game that I could play on PC with a gamepad, but I found none in my library I want to play at the moment. I don't play "AAA" games, but was looking into Oceanhorn. Maybe I'll pick up on GOG.
Asgard's Wrath 1 & 2 - Incredible VR experiences. AW2 had some issues, but overall it was the most epic standalone Quest game I've played.
SOMA - Loved it. Sci-fi horror with puzzles and stealth is my favorite.
The Talos Principle - I just started it. Kind of slow, but I'm getting into it.
Been alternating between Genshin Impact, Space Crew, and Brigador Up-Armored Edition.
I am not going to spend that much time talking about Genshin because all I have been doing lately is building characters for the Monthly domain challenges.
For Space Crew, to me, it is a more polished version of Bomber Crew. To which I had downloaded the copy of Bomber Crew to compare the two games, Space Crew has more QoL things that I like, and because of the different settings, a lot more things to do in Space Crew.
Brigador Up-Armored Edition is a isometric cyberpunk mech game that I have on GOG. It's fine, I wouldn't recommend it to someone, if I know of they don't care for that type of game.