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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.
Another week, still cranking away at Advance Wars 2 on GBA. At this point, I'm on the very last mission for Green Earth and I believe the final set of missions against Black Hole is right after this; not entirely sure what I'll do after this, but my intentions right now are to play Dual Strike on my DS, though I suspect by the time I get there I won't be ready to start another Advance Wars game again, so we'll see.
I'm finally finished with my "mega project" of painting 115 models before this coming Saturday, but my work has been slowing down a bit in the lead-up to finishing, as I had the big things done, so I've begun to commit more time to gaming. So, I fired-up Daggerfall again last week for the first time in a year, due to previously getting bored and I must say, it's still a lovely game and I still have very fond memories of it back when I first played the demo when I was like 13 or so, but boy, even with a lot of mods does the game feel hollow.
Daggerfall feels like the type of game that you, as a player, need to bring a lot to. You need to really be motivated to roleplay and exist as your character in this world, which is just not something I'm good at or have a real desire to engage with. One example is that during my last play session a year ago, I became a werewolf on accident; this was pretty cool, as I could transform, regain all my health and keep adventuring through dungeons, even though I couldn't pick up loot and the like anymore. The other drawback is that I occasionally had to go hunt the innocent; sounds pretty cool. What does this really amount to? Not much. Basically go to a town or village, take a few swipes at the sprites walking around until they turn into blood, then run away from the Guards and move on, problem solved.
I did get a "note" (Notes randomly appear on your screen, because they don't really have a method to have an NPC walk up and talk to you) that said a Werewolf hunter would begin hunting me in 90-days if I didn't cure myself, which I decided to do after tiring of the need to go kill innocents, because it was kind of annoying. Anyway, I did the quest, which didn't amount to much either; basically go talk to a guy (Which was challenging to find, because the HiddenMapMarkers mod breaks this aspect of the game), fast travel to another town to talk to another guy, pay him to create a potion to give to an NPC as the cure for myself and then fast travel to another town and talk to the citizens to figure out who I need to kill. But talking to the NPC's doesn't mean much, as it's just a very basic dialogue interface that requires you to just repeatedly ask the same question and see if the dice roll for the NPC shows you what you need to see. You can even just back out of dialogue and repeat the same question at the same NPC and get a different answer each time.
At any rate, I found who I needed to "kill" to resolve my issue. Walking up to them, they ask if I'm a doctor here to cure their ails and can they have the potion I have. I click yes, they turn into a Werewolf, I'm cured and leave; no follow-up, no conclusion, just, I'm no longer a Werewolf, problem solved.
I have conflicting feelings about Daggerfall. I loved that demo when I was a kid, because I'd never played anything like it (I mean, this was like 1996) and I've always held it in high regard in my heart, but going back, it's just...boring. I desperately want to love it, but if I'm honest, I had way more fun with Starfield last year than I ever had with Daggerfall.
At any rate, I decided to revisit another series I love, which is Gothic. So far, so good there. I've put in about 5 hours on the first game and am enjoying myself so far; I do get tired of seeking out and talking to various NPCs, but I think that's more my mood than anything to do with the game, so we'll see if I keep up with it.
Hopefully this wasn't too rambling of a post. It feels good to get my thoughts on Daggerfall out, because again, it's a game I so desperately want to love, but just feel so bored with.
Interesting take on Daggerfall. Being 13 with a Bethesda game seemed to open up unlimited possibilities for exploration. Like you, I checked into Morrowind on XBox during my formative years and what felt like promise back then feels like boredom inducing same-iness now.
Personally, I'm amazed at the games that at 40, still seem to hook my attention. That said, I feel like it's the wiz bang novelty of an imagined world rather than the desire to live in one for 80 hours that interests me now.
I definitely don't feel bored often in Bethesda games, even if I've been playing them for going on 30-years now. For some reason, my expectations are always calculated appropriately and I'm able to have fun with them, even Starfield, which I put almost 90-hours into, which is about standard for the initial release of any of their games for me.
For me, I think it's less about the worlds (though they're still there and I enjoy them) and more about the "task list" nature of things that hooks me in a game, which is more often than not, something more mechanical than storytelling focused. For example, I love Snowrunner, because it's something that requires a long term strategy, as well as forming a task list in my head, such that, first I'm going to do this, then since I'll be there, I'll do that, etc, etc. A similar thing happens to me with Bethesda games, I believe.
Daggerfall just doesn't have much of that, I think. It's very much about telling yourself a story, rather than mastering any mechanics and creating a list of tasks for yourself, which maybe has some friction on the way. I still love it, just because it is what it is and it was what it was to me at the time, but I play it and just find myself very bored, which is disappointing to me.
That's a shame. I have to know, though, have you tried Skyrim or Fallout VR with mods?
It's a whole other kind of experience.
I've considered it, but ultimately have not, as I haven't wanted to spend the money for something I probably won't play. Primarily for the fact that I've played Subnautica VR and it makes me feel a bit ill; I can suppress it, but only for so long.
There's a big difference between Subnautica and the Bethesda VR games that affects motion sickness: Subnautica has fluid motion (heh), where the Bethesda games have point-to-point traversal. By which I mean, in Subnautica traversal is continuous and simulates real motion, which messes with your proprioception and balance, making you ill. In Skyrim VR and Fallout 4 VR at least, you choose where to jump to, then the screen fades out and in with your perspective in the destination spot, like teleportation. Though you traverse, you don't really "move," which is generally much easier for people who experience VR-induced motion sickness.
Happy to see Advantages Wars in that list. I've been hooked for months with Advance Wars By Web with friends. We're all kind of big RTS fans (we met playing StarCraft), and as adult life gets in the way, AWBW async matches is the perfect solution for usm
I saw AWBS mentioned in another comment, which was the first time I'd heard of that; it looks pretty interesting and I love the asynchronous nature of it.
It's a ton of fun, if you want to add me on AWBW for a friendly game send me a friend request (my username is pekt99). I'm not great by any means and have found playing against people, besides my brother and cousins growing up, is a lot harder than the AI.
Deejus Productions on YouTube has some great resources for new AWBW players.
Thanks, I'm not particularly smart or strategically minded either! I haven't signed-up yet and not exactly sure when I will at this point, but if and when that happens, I'll shoot a friend request over.
I'm playing Lies of P right now, and it's awesome! I'm not super skilled at souls-likes, and this one is pretty damned hard, but the quality of the environments, music, story, enemy design, and especially the combat make it worthwhile. I plan to finish the game and maybe even do an ng+ run (which I practically never do, even for games I like). Genuinely impressed by what neowiz came up with here.
This is actually something I forgot to include on my list, I'm not sure why I forgot it. I've got about 8.5 hours in it now and I think it's finally clicked for me; I'm finally getting the hang of Guarding/Perfect Guard, but yeah, it's definitely tougher.
It feels more like the original Dark Souls to me, much more so than Elden Ring felt.
Final Fantasy VI (SNES on Steam Deck)
I got the original on release for Christmas as a kid, so the SNES version will always be the definitive edition to me.
It's been a long time since I last did a play through, and it's been fun doing another run. I had forgotten little things like the pacing, the power curve, the exact party composition requirements, etc.
There's definitely aspects of its design that seem dated now, but despite that I think a lot of it still holds up really well. I love how much they're able to tell a good story through little sprite skits, I love the themes of the story (failure and redemption, different forms of love, what it is to be human). And it's always fun to see the little bits of foreshadowing and calls forward here and there.
Link's Awakening (Switch remake)
I never owned the original. I did play the GBC version on emulation a few years ago, but never quite finished it; I stopped at Turtle Rock for some reason. For disclosure, my all time favorite Zelda game is probably still ALttP, likely due to familiarity and nostalgia. (I did own the cartridge for that one.)
I thought the remake was fantastic and finished it in fairly short order. I loved the little quality of life touches, like making good use of the extra buttons on the Switch, being able to move and attack diagonally more easily, the map that's clearly borrowed from BotW with the ability to place markers, and so forth. The remake definitely felt easier because of these things.
I also really enjoyed the chibi diorama art style. (I just wish it could have maintained the framerate solidly.) I haven't really seen this art style in any other game (except maybe Animal Crossing), but I'd definitely like to see more of it.
The length felt just about right, too. What with family, I don't have as much time as I used to, so I've come to appreciate focused, tight games that don't outstay their welcome.
Doom (2016) (Desktop PC)
This is my current game, and I've got mixed opinions so far.
First, graphically, it's pretty cool. I got myself a new gaming/software dev/ML tinkering desktop rig for Christmas to replace a machine that I'd been using since 2010 or so (albeit with some upgrades here and there). I'm enjoying finally being able to not just play this game, but to crank the graphics up to Ultra on 4k and not even see my GPU break 50 degrees.
That said, I find that all the snazzy graphics often means that there's too much visual clutter and I miss passages, secrets, switches, ledges, etc. Occasionally this has led to me getting stuck and having to look the level up in a guide, only to find that there was some object (such as a terminal or a corpse) that I was supposed to have interacted with.
The combat is... interesting. I played a ton of multiplayer FPSs back in the day, tons of Quake 1 and 2 DM, and I led a UT2k3/4 CTF clan for a while; so I'm no stranger to FPSs. This game doesn't really suite my favored play style, I think. I like to scope things out carefully and pick enemies off from a distance. Let me line up a kill shot with a hit-scan weapon from across the map and I'm in my element.
Here, the game loop seems to revolve around large levels divided into little mini arenas. You step out into an area, the doors close to seal you in, and then waves of enemies teleport in to attack. The game is really oriented around close-up, almost melee combat, especially with the glory kills being almost required for keeping health up in between the waves. There's essentially no way for me to get the drop on the biggest enemies, nor to know how to budget my ammo and powerups. (There've been times I've let a quad damage go unused because I didn't know if there was a still-bigger wave coming.)
I can see what they're doing here. It seems like they're really trying to recreate a DM-style experience in a single player campaign, but I don't think it quite works. In a real DM, I would have played a given map a bunch of times and be very familiar with where the spawn points are, where the power ups are, and what the map flow is like. Here, I don't really get a chance at that. There's no time to get comfortable with the mini arena before I'm attacked, I don't know what's going to spawn or where, and by the time I do know I'm already done with it and moving on to the next thing.
That said, I do find it very satisfying fragging Cacodemons out of the sky with the Gauss canon. :-)
My other big criticism is with the checkpoint system. I'm sure that they probably replaced normal saving with checkpointing to try to prevent some amount of save-scumming, or saving mid-combat. But I find it way too easy to miss the "Checkpoint reached" message unless I expect it and am looking for it, and there's no way to see where the last checkpoint was! I'm used to many games these days showing a little screenshot on the save file, and I miss that greatly here. That, or being able to save any time I'm not in the middle of combat.
I'm still having fun and I plan to finish, but it does feel a bit flawed.
Doom 2016 is definitely not built to be a slow-paced game, at least not during combat. There's almost a rhythm to it, and you're right that tearing demons apart for health is a big part of it. Lots of circle-strafing.
It's not as much like an old arena shooter, it really is a modern look at the first FPS games (back when they were all Doom or Doom-clones). I also tried to lean on the Gauss Cannon and it does work but the game shines when you juggle weapons, turn on the firehose of violence, and crank the volume as high as you can.
Yes, I've definitely been juggling the weapons. I think the game tries to force that somewhat via ammo limits, at least early on. Relying exclusively on one type of weapon is a quick way to run out of ammo during a protracted fight. (I just finished the ARC level last night, and whew, that was a long battle right at the end.)
FFVI is the high watermark in the series for me for so many reasons. Comic spite skits come at the right time throughout what's often a dark and dreary story. That, and the environments were just leaps and bounds beyond what FFVI offered - it felt so much more mature, and at a time in my 8 year old life when I was craving something different.
Do you mean beyond what FFIV offered? Honestly, I enjoyed all three of the SNES-era FF games, but FFVI is definitely the top in my opinion.
But yes, I always find the parts of the story with the Empire especially to be quite dreary. I think a huge part of that is the music. Brrr. Though the dreariness is certainly effective at making me want to defeat them.
Yea, absolutely what I meant but didn't type :/.
During the pandemic my buddy surprised me with the gift of an Oculus 2 headset. Our gaming together got us through some dark times over the years. Coming home from the airport now with it in my bag. He and I played in the same room for the first time in ages.
We are having a blast with the VR game Dungeons of Eternity. They are somewhat simple procedurally-generated maps with all kinds of monsters and bosses to kill. For a pair of nerds in our 50s, it is as close as we’ve ever gotten to playing a live action D&D campaign—the lifelong dream.
It is still a bit puzzly for our tastes and the climbing mechanic is mostly broken but if you feel like breaking a sweat swinging hammers against skeletons and demons, it is a fun challenge.
Also, we are hardly ever at the cutting edge of gaming anymore and playing a new game with no idea how it develops or ends is a real treat. Like the good old days.
Super cool to hear about your co-op experience during the pandemic. I really wish that VR had more of a hold on all of us before that happened, as co-op gaming in a simulated space was a really incredible way to bridge the gap.
Been really into the game tails noir. It’s a detective dialogue heavy game in a sort of zootopia like world, with distinct acts. It’s been a lot of fun with the choices and the visuals are gorgeous.
Unfortunately just read this morning that the studio is shutting down due to their next game unable to secure funding. Def worth checking out tho if it sounds like your cup of tea.
Huh, apparently they changed the name some time after release. It was named Backbone when I played it.
Great game! Except it ended on a cliffhanger that I guess we'll now never see resolved... There's a prequel released last year, though, that I haven't played yet. Maybe that will answer some of my questions.
Oh interesting. Had no idea about either of those. I’ll have to check out the prequel as well!
By the way, you may also enjoy Blacksad: Under the Skin, another anthropomorphic noir detective game. (Just avoid the Switch port, which has bugs and poor performance.)
Can't decide how I feel about FFVII Rebirth. I wasn't expecting to love the first one as much as I did, so I think I might have had misplaced expectations for the second one.
The dystopian atmosphere seems to be pretty much gone. Cloud's characterization confuses me. The open-world has been modernized in a way that I'm not a huge fan of. The level progression is simplified, but somehow more confusing? There's also some weird pacing decisions both in terms of story, but also gameplay. For example, there are some forced actions and sequences that are painfully slow. I think these things are fine when executed properly, but in this case I would not consider it a polished execution. It honestly feels like a completely different team made this game.
That said, of course the graphics are absolutely beautiful. I also quite enjoy the linear portions of the game. Just last night, I got through the Mythril Caves and I thought to myself, "you know, maybe I'll go back and give the open world stuff a chance again." But then as soon as I do, it completely deflates me and my will to play the game.
I will probably finish it, and I'm working hard to keep an open mind, but so far, it pales in comparison to the tight and focused execution of the first game.
I'm only about 10-11hrs in, still putzing around between Kalm and the Chocobo Farm. And I think I share some of your critiques. Before it released, I didn't do any research. It was a guaranteed buy for me. Plus, sometimes research can turn into hype, and then the game never lives up to the hype, and it just leads to disappointment.
So I had no idea FF7Re was open-world. That was a huge surprise, especially because I'm not the biggest fan of open-world games for reasons I won't list here. That said, I think I'm still in the honeymoon phase with the game, though I am taking it relatively slowly so I don't burn myself out. Like you, a big reason I'm enjoying it is just the graphics alone. The world is gorgeous. I want to see more of it, so exploration has kept me doing the sidequests. But I know at some point, I'm going to get tired of doing them. I know I don't have to do them, but then the pseudo-completionist in me is going to get annoyed that I'm skipping things. I do want to know more about this world, the characters, and everything, but why do I have to do it via all these sidequests? I've spent 3-4hrs doing these so far over a few sessions, though I want to start moving forward.
I am enjoying some of the newer mechanics, such as synergies, but it's a lot to learn and keep track of. There's also a lot more character customization this time around via the folio, weapon skills, etc, which some people like. For me, it just becomes overload through paradox of choice. So I'm not so keen on that. But whatever, I'll get over it and figure it out.
We'll see how it goes.
Just finished “aground” on pc steam. At is essence, it is 2D resource gathering and crafting game. I went into it blind assuming it would provide a good distraction for a couple hours. And oh boy, it ended up hitting the right spots in such a way that I kept on playing it til the end (over a couple of weeks). it plays great on steam deck, and I also streamed it to my iPad using steam link. The story is very simple, you are basically a survivor who has crash landed in a new planet, and are trying to rebuild a society. There is a component of combat and progression through leveling up, but what really steals the show is the gameplay loop (gather resources - build stuff - solve x problem, repeat) and the amount of “secrets” that are better experienced than told. I had a lot of “oh wow” moments as I pieced together that this game was larger than it seemed at first impression. FYI This game would’ve been ruined if I had seen videos/play throughs, so if it sounds interesting try to avoid looking things up unless you’re stuck.
Thanks, I tried demo and game definitely looks interesting. Bought it on gog
To deal with my Balatro addiction I dipped back into Wildfrost. It was near unbeatable at launch so I wanted to give it another shot after the rebalance. Presentation wise, I love the art and music. It's very Saturday morning cartoon with a lot of little sound and visual effects that ups the production. The card play is very fun for me but a lot of people I know hate it. It's a lot of planning, juggling your board and prep to an insane degree. Some late game combats can plain hard counter a powerful build so I can see where the frustration comes from. But the synergies are incredible and often not obvious.
Also almost finished Ghostrunner 2 and it's a mixed bag. It scratches the Mirrors Edge "flow" game itch. And like that game, combat is practically pointless. It's in a weird spot because you are incredibly powerful and the only treat is not seeing an enemy or block/dodge reflexes. There's good enemy veriety and attack patterns to play around but it's never more than 2 steps to to kill one. And I can't imagine a better arrangement that would maintain the cyber ninja fantasy. But fortunately the environments are mostly interesting, there's some amazing set pieces and the freerunning techniques are begging to be optimized. It's also short enough to be done in a session or two.
After a long gaming hiatus I've gotten back in to whittling away at my backlog. Right now I'm playing Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology for the Nintendo 3DS. Having never played the DS original I can't say how the game has changed between that and this re-release, but the graphics must be quite similar because there is no 3D effect added into the main action screen.
The gameplay is interesting in that you have two simultaneous timelines that you'll hop between in order to proceed the story. The thing about these two timelines is that they aren't independent, and that your actions in one will impact the results in the other, and you'll often have to do things like ensure an NPC doesn't die in the alternate timeline so that they're alive at the same point in the standard timeline. The difficult part, especially when returning to it after a couple of years, is trying to remember which characters are available in which timelines and at which nodes for you to travel to and interact with. Fortunately gamefaqs exists.
The battle system is different than other games I've played. Enemies exist on a 3x3 grid and your characters have different moves to push or pull them across the grid with the intent to get all enemies piled up in the same spot so that any one attack can hit them all. The tedious part comes in having to scroll through your list of skills to get to the Right Attack or Push Attack in order to move them around. All in all it adds a layer of strategy to the battles that isn't too onerous.
The other aspects of the game, (story, sound, art design), are all well-composed.
I've had this sitting on both my DS and my 3DS for some time now, but I think after I finish what I'm currently playing on portable, I may give the 3DS version a go finally. I'm not big on JRPGs, but the conceit sounds interesting enough that I'm intrigued.
Valkyria Chronicles - I'm not the anime fan that I once was, but after Reiko Kodama's passing last year and upon learning that Hitoshi Sakamoto composed the soundtrack, I figured it was time to finish this game.
It's super charming, and tells a really easy-access alternate history of the second world war with fantasy elements attached. That, and I love the inventive mix of SRPG and third person shooter.
Tears of the Kingdom - it's just such a marvel. My wife and I dig into it on the regular and love the fresh sense of adventure that you can experience each time you sit down with it. I avoided the underworld for much of the early game and am loving how this title riffs in the duality of old Zelda games, but with a strong dose of Lovecraftian gloom and doom.
Phantasy Star IV - I seem to pick this up once ever handful of years because it's quick, the challenge is appropriate and it really brings me back to what I felt was the pinnacle of storytelling genius as a kid gamer in the 90s. The music and storytelling moments really hit and I love just how unique from Square, Camelot and Nintendo RPGs this was. Maybe one day the team at Sega (or even Atlus) will continue the mainline series.
I've played TotK since fall, and just last week I learned that wherever there's water in the overworld, there's a wall in the underworld. And it's made exploring the underworld a lot less frustrating.
How far into it are you? I've found all the sages and the Master Sword now, so I'm probably close to the end.
Funny that, I'm just where you are. Just got the lumbering mechanical sage, saved the forest and landed the sword. It's an amazing game, hey? I really love that Nintendo captured fire in a bottle twice -- they're truly the little engine that could.
It is a great game, but I prefer Breath of the Wild. TotK almost lost me early on because of a lot of early game frustrations. I'm thinking of maybe writing a longer post about it here when I eventually finish it; to sing my praises and air my frustrations.
I played BOTW a few years after release and did not like it so much, but TOTK fixed my complaints and I really enjoyed it. I keep meaning to go back and play BOTW again now that I have a better appreciation of the game world. One of the main things I didn't like in BOTW was the combat, but TOTK has a smoother difficulty curve so by the end I was better at fighting.
I'm surprised at your early game woes. BOTW seemed the more difficult game to me. The combat is twitchier, you don't have the helpers, weapons break but there aren't as many ways to get good weapons, laser robots are around every corner, and climbing is required a lot more... and I swear it rains more often! By comparison, TOTK starts out easy, all the early monsters are those nice red moblins you can thwack, the only tricky bit is when the story nudges you towards The Depths, and even that is a fairly easy introduction, and you can skip it and go off frolicking in the main grassy overworld if you like. There are no octopus robots anywhere in the game, and the trickiest "unfair" early boss you might find are those hand things that randomly (?) appear. There's even an early quest to storm a moblin camp that looks fairly difficult, but a group of townsfolk help out and it adds to the "let's rebuild this place guys!" good vibes the game has.
Those fucking gloom arm monsters were one of my early frustrations. I met one less than an hour after escaping Tutorial Island, and it absolutely wrecked me. They get so much easier to defeat once you get a sage or two to distract them, enough stamina to sprint away from them, and some bomb flowers to throw at them, but that first time I just had to reload my latest save point and avoid that whole area for a long time. For a while I was worried the developers had played too much Elden Ring.
Is there really a difference in combat between the two games? I didn't really notice anything. But then again it's been years since I played BotW.
Ah, OK. I first found one on the way to Hateno Village, but before that I'd already been around the other half of the map. And after death and reloading, it didn't spawn again.
The BOTW fights all revolved around counter attacks and back flip timing. If you can't counter or do that move, it is not fun. The robots all have instant kill rays that you need to dodge. In totk you can just plough into fights, and mostly get away with being crap. Or that was my experience.
Eager to hear about how many of those frustrations were part of the extended tutorial island. There's certainly sacrifices made to game progression and story in those early tutorial hours.
The extended tutorial was a huge part of it. I didn't like the starting island at all, and it was first when I got down on the ground that I started enjoying the game, several hours into it.
It also helps to know that the underworld basically inverts the terrain of the overworld. Mountains map to pits, and valleys to ridges, etc. I also found it really helpful to put markers on the underworld map underneath overworld shrines when light-root hunting and vice versa. The two really do correspond in a ton of ways.
I need to jump back into Valkyria Chronicles. I'm not big on the anime trappings, but the story is somehwat enjoyable and I like that I can aIlmost play it as a visual novel with some strategy sections in between. I'm about 5-6 hours in so far and just finished another mission, but haven't gone back to it yet to get the story follow-up, because I haven't felt like I had the time.
I'd recommend it - the story is charming (young me would have loved it) and I find it to be an excellently paced game for when I'm on the exercise bike. SRPGs really cater well to doing two things at once.
I'm still juggling weird stretches of time, so along with Monster Hunter I've been doing a few map sets in Doom. It's been many years since I last did anything with that game and some of the more recent maps I've been playing have been phenomenal. I'll list a few I've enjoyed thus far.
Infinite Doom - an in-progress procedural roguelike vision of Doom. It looks like Doom, it plays like Doom, but it also has a big set of progression systems and new stuff to use. It's developed enough to be winning awards on DoomWorld, I've really enjoyed the setup for short runs.
Insanity Edged - Massive, ultra-detailed maps with lots of neat setpieces. It's very pretty. The modder has a narrative for it, with this one being a sequel to "Winter's Fury". WF is well done too, but has a much more muted/grey color palette.
Cosmogenesis - I looked up "what's the biggest doom map" and found my way to this. It's a slaughter map, meaning the challenge is in managing massive hordes with positioning/judicious firing. It's very difficult, I've only gotten through a couple of the rooms. But the map is insanely huge and looks really cool with it's pink/black sort of color scheme.
Ashes 2063: When I was last into Doom shit this was just barely taking shape. Now it's two episodes, and it is easily one of the best mods I've ever seen. Could easily be its own product, it feels like it belongs with any other Doom/Build Engine game. You're a wastelander in a post apocalyptic town, doing wastelander shit. Original art, music, story, etc. Really impressive and there's a standalone version on their moddb page.
Total Chaos: This one is older but has the strongest presentation of any Doom mod that I know of. It's a survival horror experience, that feels kinda close to something like Condemned: Criminal Origins moment-to-moment. It feels liminal, like a Build Engine game that is impossibly good looking. It has an older design sensibility in its levels but is pushing all sorts of engine features about as far as they go.
Ultimate Doom in Name Only: This one is a remake of the original Doom, all of its episodes, with just a totally different, more modern sensibility. It's Doom, but more worldly, less abstract - you go in big bases and across landscape, things are very clearly defined and realistically organized compared to the layouts and appearance of stuff in the original game. Same stories, same general progression so to speak, just completely redesigned. My one gripe is they changed the music. I've been enjoying this paired with Brutal Doom, the levels are a lot of fun to traverse and have lots of monsters.
Hell on Earth Starter Pack: I never actually played this despite being a long time fan of Brutal Doom. It's pretty good. It remakes the campaign of Doom 2 and its secret levels, same guy who made Brutal Doom. Similar to the UDINO, it's the same basic story/idea just done up in a more modern way. You're still hunting down keycards and massacring demons, the architecture just makes more sense and the levels have a clearer sense of progression between them.
Auger Zenith: If you were a fan of Ion Fury, you might appreciate this one especially. It's cyberpunk doom, with everything redesigned to realize that concept. Lots of original artwork and cool setpieces, new weapons, basically its own game similar to some of the prior mods mentioned.
Legend of Doom: This is the original Legend of Zelda. You are playing that game through Doom, with everything redesigned to fit.
SIGIL I & II: New maps made by the dude who made the game, they're really good. Complicated, abstract, difficult. If you buy it from Romero's website you can get the not-MIDI soundtracks, both are free on their own.
Aliens: Eradication: It's an Aliens game. If you ever wanted to play a 90's style Aliens FPS this is it. Good sound design, good sprites and locations. If not for the movement being Doom's, it would feel like a completely independent product.
Maps of Chaos: This one is older but I enjoy it with Brutal Doom. It works with either the original game or Doom II, and it just expands all of the levels by adding in new sections, monster closets and types of monsters. A straightforward expansion on some specific aspects. Brutal Doom gives you a huge variety of weapons, so it tends to be really fun for trying out what all you can get. Dual wielding auto shotguns and shouting expletives is something I think a lot of FPS games could do with.
All of these can be found pretty easily, google the names and you'll find either their idgames or moddb pages. If you want an easy way to find more, check out the Cacowards. They've been running these awards for over twenty years, you can check out their lists from way back and find all sorts of cool stuff. A lot of what's out there can be done pretty quickly, and file sizes tend to be pretty small. They all worked in GZDoom on my steam deck, fwiw. It's nice to play on it because you can easily hit the screen's refresh rate while still seeing a bunch of crazy shit.
I'll have to check out a few of these other ones, but I've been playing Infinite Doom here and there when I feel like I just have a few minutes and it's been great fun. Though last night I got a cool item, was having a good run and then fell into a poison pit there was no way out of, so that was disappointing...
Also Ashes was fucking incredible; I played through both episodes last year and absolutely loved them. Afterglow threw me for a bit of a loop, because it was pretty markedly different in design from 2063, but once I recalibrated myself, I enjoyed it just as much.
I actually installed Infinite Doom on my Deck, but got a bit frustrated with the control scheme, as I usually do with an FPS on Deck. It just never feels right and I get frustrated because I know I can do be doing better if I had a keyboard and some-kind-of-mouse (I often play with Trackpoint on my laptop), so I ended-up not bothering on there. That said, I don't mind using Chocolate Doom on either my Deck or my Vita, since the autoaim is so generous, it doesn't feel weird to play with sticks instead of KB/M, so I may have to see which of these I'm interested in work in Chocolate.
On the deck, fwiw I use a little auto-aim to get past the sticks feeling weird, with gzdoom iirc it should be in the Player Setup menu. ATM I have it set at 15, reduced head bobbing by about 2/3, and reduced sensitivity by about 1/4 on all axes (0.700 in the controllers menu). I found a piece of software called GZDeck that is very helpful for loading mods/organizing things, it'll let you quit out and load up new stuff without exiting.
It's taken an order of magnitude more fiddling than most things, that's for sure, but after doing it I feel like I've closed the gap enough to feel comfy in it. Early on I practiced a little by trying to run classic maps with that maps of chaos mod - the basic layout is familiar so you're never lost, but there's way more stuff to blow up, so you get lots of opportunity to see what you can do.
I may fiddle with it, it's certainly not something I'm afraid of, but it definitely just feels right on a computer over the Deck, so I may not actually end up futzing with it for that reason.
Just finished Yoshi World for the first time. It was a very cute game and I enjoyed it. It's definitely a game that could use the remake treatment, especially with the sounds in the game. It's very cute, and I would love to see it in the more modern Mario art.
Gone above 300 hours in Genshin Impact today, I thought I would run out of content because I am completely f2p yet it just never ran dry.
But it kind of saddens me to learn about lore because this game could have been a much more sophisticated project rather than a "just add enough content so people will keep buying."
I am also waiting for Persona 3's Remake crack ( not sure if I am allowed to mention piracy ) so I can experience it, though that seems a bit far fetched.
Just finished Life is Strange: True Colors a few hours ago. Absolutely terrific game. It has a great story with interesting characters and the game is just beautiful. The environments are nice and colorful and there are some nice vistas. Only issue is that performance, especially on the Switch, leaves a bit to be desired. It definitely could've used some optimization. I hear even on current generation consoles it has problems with graphics popping in.
This is all after I just finished Silent Hill 2 a few days ago as well. Another wonderful game. I loved the dark, creepy atmosphere and the story is interesting. I loved the symbolism of everything like the monsters that James faces. It's a good game and I'm glad I finally got to play it after 23 years.
How is it compared to LiS and Before the Storm? I adored the original, loved BtS but hadn't finished it, and I own 2 but just can't get into it.
I love it. I think it stands equal to the original game. I enjoyed Before the Storm as well, and I didn't get past chapter 1 of Life is Strange 2. It is remarkable, and I am glad I got to play it <3
I've been playing Minecraft, but that by itself isn't super exciting, the real exciting part is I built my own server, both hardware and software, for the very first time!!!
So, I don't play Minecraft often, but every year or so, I have a different friend circle that wants to fuck around for a couple weeks. Usually we just rent a server because it's cheap and easy. Lately, I've been going through some old PC parts I have lying around and trying to figure out what to do with them, so when a friend circle suggested a minecraft server, I volunteered to build one instead of us renting one, as it'd be a fun project.
I kind of purposefully built the computer itself to look shitty (it's in a shoebox and ziptied down to it to be secure) because it'd be funny, though I did ensure everything was safe (except me having to start it up with a screwdriver because no power button since no case). This was my first time really using linux, though, I wanted to try it out instead of doing a windows based server. I've worked in terminals at work before, so setting up the server using almost entirely command line was not that alien to me, but I've not worked with linux, specifcally, or ever done any command line as advanced as I would need to set this up. I chose Ubuntu, originally Ubuntu server, but I switched to normal Ubuntu after I found out the most recent version of server has some installer issues. Pics of jank computer here, I'm proud of how shitty it looks while actually being secured down.
Honestly, it's been great so far and I think I would try daily driving Linux if I didn't game so much on my PC, so it really is a no-go currently for anything besides my server. But I learned to set up the minecraft server, learned how to set it up as a background process instead of needing to run in an active terminal, I set it up to auto restart if either the computer restarts or the process crashes, and I even set up a cron job to back up the game world files every day!
There's still some jank to it, but I'm proud of it as it's really my first programming project outside of work. I work in data, analytics, and reporting, so I do work with SQL every day and terminal sometimes, but I've never really felt a draw to code outside of work until this project and it was quite fun!
Besides that, I've been back on the iRacing train. I've never really "quit" iRacing in the four years I've been using the service, but I definitely race less than I used to. I still do every endurance event with my team and usually one league race a week, but I've been feeling the draw to do more official races lately and get on that iRating grind, especially now that Indycar is back! We got 2nd in our split for the Bathurst 12 hour, so we're hoping to replicate that (or get a win!) at the Sebring 12 hour next weekend. It will be the first endurance race iRacing has with rain, which was just recently added, so it will certainly be an interesting race.
Re gaming on Linux: I've been pretty impressed by Valve's Proton project. I still haven't started using Linux as a daily driver on my gaming laptop for hardware compatibility reasons, but I have a more hardware stable desktop PC that I've tried it on and the results are pretty awesome. It's so much better than the old days of endlessly fiddling with Wine only to inevitably run into some obscure issue and give up. Def worth trying it out. There is also a database where you can check various games for compatibility with Proton
Unfortunately there are some games I really would need native support for (such as iRacing). I really do hope there's a day where I don't have to use windows, but for now, I think I'd still need to set up a dual boot no matter what. I appreciate the heads up that Linux gaming is farther along now, I just have a niche case that's probably going to lock me to windows for another few years.
Nothing serious, still playing Trackmania every few days (never competition, just for fun trying to finish for silver medals on most of the tracks), from time to time playing Noita (also nothing serious, I'm playing with saves which is not officially supported but randomnes in this game really irks me), and playing few idle games on Android.
Oh, and also slowly playing Moon Island, and slowly approaching/grinding to the finish of Wall World.
Trackmania has always been a go-to arcade game for me and there's been a lot of new players with all the good youtube/Twitch coverage. But if it seems impossible to go beyond silver, you probably at the skill check that the game does a horrible job equipping you for. The 2 easy techniques to improve are action keys and ice driving. The action keys basically give you a little more granularity in turning but right now controllers/steering wheels are king. Driving on flat ice exceptionally counterintuitive and just powering through it develops bad habits. A good video tutorial should walk you through step by step.
After that, a lot of it comes down to maintaining speed through turns, jumps and slopes. Bugslides, speedslides, air breaking, jump canceling. It's good to learn about them but that's the type of skills you develop over time.
And from there, it's just stupidly difficult things that 90% of players can never reliably pull off. Uberbug launches, nosebugs, all the kacky stuff.
Yeah, I tried to use action keys, but.. I just don't want to. Main issues - its additional 5 keys that I have to manage during race and also there no indication at all is action key is active or not. I have to remember turn on action key before turn and then I have to remember to turn it off, while again there no indication is it on or off.
I understand that if I grind track enough time I will get gold, but I don't want to grind :) so I prefer casual silver which I can get after few races.
Another week of Challenges in World of Warships, the secondary battery one was very fun.
I want to hit them with my sword! ...Which is longer than their primary battery.
Big problem was that I'm sure they didn't touch secondaries (so they still don't hit the 32mm threshold) so hybrid is still better.
I also had a game in which about half of my team had noting close to a good showing:
Can you believe we lost? If you can't take a joke...
Otherwise, Arknights just released their latest permanent event: Expeditioner's Joklumarkar.
It's the rogue-like mode, so I think I've already spoken about the basic loop: Go through fights and encounters to get and upgrade Operators and Relics to get a team with broken synergies before reaching the boss on floor 5.
'Course, with new theme comes new stuff, including aesthetic (snow, inhospitable level of cold, and demons), new systems both to help you (you can now target nodes with modifiers or outright change them, potentially getting you out of a tight spot, or outright trivializing whatever you're facing, even the bosses!) and hinder you (run-wide debuffs that makes fights but also interactions in the rest of the mode harder), and even some refinements (the shop upgrade system now appears at all shops instead of randomly appearing in some runs; keys are replaced by an index that actually starts above 0 and can be obtained more easily, but is also needed to see what's ahead or even getting into if you let it drop to 0).
All in all a good followup on the last theme once you're used to having everything locked again. Except for one thing: you start on the lowest difficulty, with a -40% score modifier, which means your progress through the battlepass is nearly halved (in my experience, more quartered). Oh, and the score-neutral difficulty is Braving Nature 2, so you'll have to win twice.
There's also the fact that 3 skills are locked to higher difficulty levels, but since it's just 3 skills and the rest is usable everywhere I don't have any issue with that.
Bunch of tips if you wanna try and quickly get to BN2
First up, starting squad is "Overcoming Your Weakness" with Popukar, Orchid, and Reed the Flame Shadow (use support recruiting if you don't have her, do note she's a 6 star medic, so don't expect to have any hope left normally).Reed's S2 is usually the best at killing the hordes of enemies most Ops have, S3 is best for the 1st boss.
Since you have lots of enemies coming in at all times, CC is a must: Splash Casters, Artilleryman Snipers, multi-hit skills, high block counts.
In the skill tree, unlock Scout (upgrades Operator for free, +1 Index) and Bosky Passage (Secret Floor) as fast as possible, in this one Secret Floor don't end in bosses, and can not involve fight at all!
Also, this skill tree lets you unlock nodes so long as any previous node is unlocked, so you can rush to a specific higher tier perk if you must.
The first boss is a raid boss, 10 minutes to kill, each wave has it's own set of enemies.
It can drop spikes on an entire column, or more rarely stun an operator while dealing lots of damage, and targets the last operator deployed.
In the second phase, it gets a damage reduction to both Physical and Arts damage by 60%, and targets 2 operators at once.
Started playing Advance Wars by Web (AWBW) again. I wasn't getting email notifications before and would have my games time out on me. I setup the Discord notifications and has helped me keep consistent on my turns. I'm debating making it my main competitive game so we'll see if I keep that up.
I do wish more games supported asynchronous multiplayer. It's the only way I can play now as a Dad and living on the other side of the planet from my friends (12-15 [or 13-16 depending on daylight savings] time difference).
If you haven't tried it already, Axis & Allies has an asynchronous multiplayer. It's based on the boardgame and works the same, but it's well suited for videogaming.
I've been a fan of the board game for a long time. My brother and I would play with our cousins or some friends and usually one game would take us 10-15+ hours due to food breaks, discussion, strategy, and general hanging out.
I've actually looked at starting a game of the open source version TripleA. I think it's finally time to get the gang together and play online!
I've started Witcher 3 on Steam Deck. I have opted for pre-next-gen (last update of original game) in the properties of the game, this makes it run very nicely while not needing that much power and still looking great on the small screen.
I have played and finished this game on Switch Lite, put around 150 hours into it. My friend recommended to me to play on Death march (highest) difficulty and I did. And I'm doing that now too. I can't imagine playing this game on lower difficulty... Death march makes you actually use all the things you can to overcome your foes. If I played on easier, I wouldn't need all the potions, skills, magic etc. It would just become hack'n'slash. This way though... You have to know what, when and how to use. I suck at action games and this one is packed. And even then I can actually play it. Yes, I die, a lot. But it doesn't become chore and I enjoy the game.
Witcher 3 is the game as it should be done. It is huge, full of people and stuff to do, it has its story and history, you are free to do and go as you will limited only by what you can or cannot fight (which is how it should he done IMHO). If you really take your time with all the quests, you are looking for 150 hoursof gameplay, maybe 200 with DLCs. It is unvelievabke how they managed to make something this big and not boring or empty at the same time!
I love how it's still basically the gold standard for open world RPGs despite being so old. Amazing game.
I've made a second attempt to play Anno 1800. I got to the end of the short story campaign this time, though I'm struggling to get further as it feels like I'm constantly going back to early-game production lines and having trouble keeping track of all the different production lines and trade routes. I've got through Factorio and some of the harder mods for it, but it feels like I can't use the techniques I had there to modularise things and make higher level production lines work.
I have been looking through my vast library of games for things to address my video game ennui. I've played several new-to-me games over the last couple of weeks, as well as at least one "old comfortable" game.
Civ 6 - old comfortable. There was recently a 2k sale, and there was one DLC, Gathering Storm, that I didn't have, so I purchased it for some very small sum of money (I think it was under $5), and gave it a shot. It adds a few new leaders, including Wilfrid Laurier (Canada), and a few new mechanics, including disasters, diplomacy, and electricity. I enjoyed all of the new additions to the game; I tend to play Huge maps on middling difficulty, I rarely go for conquest, and I enjoyed playing as my home and native land. The special improvement for Canada is a hockey rink, the special unit is a mountie, and they both made me smile. Overall, this felt like a very good DLC, and I enjoyed a few different games of Civ over the last month. I may come back to Civ 6 occasionally over the next little while as there's something comforting about it, but I'm giving it a rest for a bit, because the last couple of games felt a bit same-y; I ended up with Diplomatic victories when I wasn't even trying to go that route.
Hexologic is a hexagon based arithmetic / logic puzzle. It features hexagons that are nestled against each other. You can fill in hexes with numbers, but only 1, 2, or 3. Hexes in a row usually have a sum that you have to get. As you progress, the logic puzzles get more and more complex, adding in new puzzle mechanics. The game does an exceptional job of prompting you to fill out these arithmetic problems. I will continue to come back to this one.
Do Not Feed The Monkeys is a voyeur simulator. You are given control of a number of cameras, you observe what is happening on the feeds, you are given strict orders not to interfere with what is happening, and you take notes and try to figure out what is going on. Every week, you must purchase more and more cameras, and many of the feeds have a story that progresses. For example, there is one which features an old man in a nursing home, but after watching him you realize he might not be what he seems. The organization you are working for (with? against?) sometimes asks you questions about whomever you are watching, like "What is the address of the building in Camera 5?" or "What is the name of the company the monkey in Camera 17 works for?" You also have to juggle some jobs, eat food, sleep, pay rent, etc. This game is good, and I have played it through twice so far, as there is a set number of turns for each play through. There are definitely adult themes, so don't let any kids play, but overall, I really enjoyed the art style, the stories, the management of cameras, the self-care management... it was all quite enjoyable.
Endzone: A World Apart is a post apocalyptic city builder. It cribs heavily from another game that I greatly enjoyed called Banished though, enough so that I eventually stopped playing. If you like city builders, though, this one was fun, and I liked the core mechanics of both it and Banished. I cannot overstate how similar the feel is, though, especially the management of the city residents, which is exactly the same.
I've been having a blast going through the abandonware website. Currently playing history channels civil war. Which is a literal og call of duty. Just sillier. Also finally played the Riddick game, it was as good as folks said. You can see how it inspired future games.
Played Balatro this week for our roguelike podcast
I was a little skeptical when people were saying this was going to be the next best roguelike deckbuilder since Slay the Spire, since that was being said about Cobalt Core last year. CC is a fun game in its own right, but Balatro has somehow captured the entire gaming world by storm in less than a month.
Overall: we really liked it as a group, but I've been having a tough time with it myself. It's fun, but sometimes feels punishingly random with not as many strategic outs as you can get in Monster Train or Luck Be A Landlord, even. That being said, every time I've sat down to only play 20 minutes, at least 90 have gone by. There's a great balance of visual aesthetic to its hard brained math puzzles where I can just sit at a round to play and think for ages.
It's such a great game to play on the Steam Deck, that I imagine anyone with a Switch is also playing it nonstop. It will be interesting to see how a mobile port shapes up and compares. I'm personally looking forward to expanded content, as I think there could be more obvious synergies to build up as a run progresses. That's maybe the toughest area for me to grok at the moment, but I've only put 12-ish hours in, versus 100+ that some of my social circle have already.
Final Fantasy 6 Pixel Remaster. Supposed it's time to stop being a neophyte Final Fantasy fan that only played 7, 7 Remake and 15. :)
I can see why people love this game so much. The cast is endearing, the gameplay is addicting and the premise of finding your party in a broken world is pretty damn cool-- something I remember having been the inspiration for Fantasian, a later game by Sakaguchi and Uematsu.
Some nitpicks:
I got hooked on Chants of Sennaar the day before yesterday and played more yesterday. Game is beautiful, sound design is awesome, and it is so forgiving which is really nice. It is lovely. I am also streaming it and a couple people watched who were very nice to talk to. So that was a great experience thus far. Very intriguing world building I am slowly discovering.
After failing to convince my wife to participate, I've been playing a solo campaign of Earthborne Rangers (EBR). I'm a sucker for co-op board games (Gloomhaven series and Spirit Island being my favorites) but haven't really done any solo play before. The game has me hooked.
EBR is a card game mechanically very similar to the Arkham Horror LCG (unsurprisingly, as EBR was created by ex-FFG employees). You build a deck of cards that represents your character, and use those cards to solve problems the game throws at you. There are two notable differences to Arkham Horror though: the theme, and the fact that EBR is an open world game.
Obviously the theme between two games not set in the same setting will be different, but EBRs theme is, for me, a very refreshing change.
The game is set in a sort of reverse-Fallout world: After almost completely destroying Earth's ecosystems, humans came together to build generational projects to fix the environment and retreated into enclosed arcologies (think Vaults) to wait them out. After a thousand or so years, they emerged into a healed and verdant world, and now live in a more harmonious relationship with nature. This theme is reflected in the mechanics of the game where a lot of the interactions happen in a way that makes the player feel as just one part of the world (e.g. game elements, like animals, can interact with each other and not just the player).
To be frank, this settings is not something that would normally resonate with me. I'm more of a grim dark kinda guy. I originally backed the game purely because it looked mechanically interesting. But after playing it for a while I actually found it really relaxing. While I yet remain partial to more bleak and violent themes, I realized that the fairly idealistic world of EBR was a very welcome escape from the nastiness that our current world feels plagued by.
EBR is also the first truly open world board game I've played (I've heard similar descriptions for 7th Continent and Sleeping Gods at least). There are no scenarios or levels, just one single interconnected area you can travel around and explore. And since traveling itself is a main mechanic, you never really get taken out of the game. There is a main storyline, but there is nothing that really forces you to engage with it if you do not want to (though there are some in-world consequences), so you can just head out into the wilderness to see what's beyond the next hill, so to speak.
To cut this long, I've really been enjoying some Earthborne Ranges lately. Shut Up & Sit Down did a great review of the game if you want to see footage of the mechanics.
Helldivers 2. Really fun game to play with some buddies. Significantly less fun after the March 6th patch but still fun enough.
What happened? Gameplay got balanced?
They tried to balance the game but ended up only nerfing popular weapons and making the balance issues even more pronounced. There was another patch yesterday which did improve things slightly.
This week has been a lot of Guild Wars 2, which my partner and I enjoy playing together a lot even though we don't really like MMOs. We play GW2 as more of a Diablo type ARPG, just with more engaging combat. Sometimes we just do dailies/weeklies (though we honestly preferred the game when it didn't have these pushier to-do tasks trying to keep players stuck to the game), but we've been doing a lot of map completion lately. That's basically checking all the activity/location boxes in map zones, which has a significant and needed reward attached to completing the whole core game maps. Our highest characters have made it to 80%, with most only around 50%. We've been playing for five and a half years, so it's about time we got at least one of our duos to completion.
After that for me, there's been weekly racing in Forza Horizon 5. Horizon has it's problems, but I've got to hand it to them: the races and road lines this time are just way more enjoyable than past installments, and with players able to make fully custom events, there's even more options for fun racing.
I said "for me" there even though my partner and I always play our Horizons together at the same time, because the rest of my playing has been trying some demos (none of which were really worthwhile, which is fine since I hardly need new games to pay attention to..), but my partner has been absolutely buried in Feed the Cups pretty much since it opened its early access, dwarfing their FH5 time. This is in the restaurant game vein of PlateUp, but here you make various weird drinks (drinks which you serve to customers which are themselves drinks--so you are in fact feeding the cups... cups?). If you like this kind of frantic management game, it has a demo and is surprisingly detailed and cute, if a bit on the random side as far as run upgrades and penalties.
In gaming-related activity, I've been doing some more tweaking to my Steam Input controller configuration for GW2. We play it on Xbox style controllers despite it having no controller support, which is still pretty neat, especially considering how complex that setup is, even if it does mean dealing with grating Steam bugs and issues that Valve never cares to bother straightening out. Right now I'm working on some minor tweaks and setting up a two-press quick-chat system. I already have a quick-emote system, so I have the construction worked out (and emotes are chat commands, so it's exactly the same, functionally), and I'm working on picking a set of simple, versatile chat snippets and arranging them in a pattern that makes as much sense as I can find (you need a pattern when you want mapping 24 results to four inputs to actually feel usable). This effort was mainly inspired by a WvW commander ( WvW is large scale PvP wars, but poorly conceived and kind of a weird construction all around) who was absolutely epic, holding off not one but two groups each comparable to ours for an extended and wild series of battles and sieges, all with nothing more than their know-how and single word chat orders. So, if small expressions can have that much utility, and I'm now sitting on a list of expert-proven words, why not upgrade the chat options I've left rudimentary for ages now, eh?
I want to get a new config version together to upload anyway, because some people have said Steam is bugging out finding the current share, and it seems maybe a new upload is proving more reliable somehow. Whatever's wrong, Valve isn't going to fix it, that's for sure, and there's no way to debug anything Steam Input, so make a new share and hope is all we've got.
Just finished Persona 3 Reload after about 90 hours of gameplay, and I enjoyed every minute of it. I really like JRPGs I've been a fan of the series ever since Persona 3 FES on PS2. They did such a great job with the remake. Climbing 250+ floors of Tartarus didn't feel like a slog, the atmosphere and visuals are amazing, the soundtrack is amazing, and the story is just as good as before, except they added some extra stuff with Strega and your teammates. The remake is quite a bit easier than the original, but not so much that it was a TOTAL cakewalk.
Timberborn
Only picked it up after the latest update (5?) with the badwater introduced. Fun game, but feel like once I get past the early to mid game, the challenge leaves. Can't imagine how the game would have played without badwater, the droughts would exist but they seem trivial to deal with once you get some floodgates up, even with badwater its just a matter of redirecting the stream somewhere.
Excited to see how it develops, I think it's a great start. Only thing that really bothers me is that it's just kinda slow, even on 3x (max) speed I have to wait so long for things to get built or for a new drought/badwater cycle to test things out.
Balatro (Nintendo Switch):
For anyone who enjoys card games or deck-building games - this one is a real treat. Coupled with fun artwork, sound effects, and nice soundtrack - it really is a steal at $15. My SO and I have been having a ton of fun playing this together. Even though it is single player, we enjoy co-strategizing.
Animal Crossing (Nintendo Switch):
I spent many years playing World of Warcraft. When life wasn’t going well for me, it was a pleasant escape into another dimension where I could always feel a sense of community and progression. I no longer play WoW because it requires a bit too much time and dedication, and I feel like Animal Crossing has somewhat filled the void (minus the excellent combat system from WoW of course). It has an incredibly relaxing gameplay loop that is easy to jump in and out of - and offers all the flexibility in the world to either play a lot or just a little.
Tetris Effect Connected (Steam on PC):
I’ve always loved Tetris on Gameboy and Switch. But I’ve recently realized I can be much faster playing on a keyboard, so I picked up a PC version of Tetris. This game also has great visual effects and music-syncing features. Really enjoying this in a dark room with headphones on.
And the replayability is just crazy. Every major real-world celebration has an event in-game with specific items, some stuff is seasonal according to the actual real-world calendar so you can get summer stuff only in the summer etc.
I'm kinda hoping for One More DLC for it :)
I thought I finished Pikmin 4, the credits rolled and everything. I was satisfied by the play time I got off it.
Then the credits stopped and the ship had to turn around because of [spoilers] and now I've got at least 2-3 more worlds to play through PLUS there's a super time-limited side game where you play as Olimar and need to get the ship fixed in 15 days - without any of the fancy gear from the main game.
The FOMO also got to me and I got Helldivers 2 for PS5 last night - my first multiplayer shooter since the first years of Overwatch I think.
Super fun, there's a hard time limit on every map and the randoms I've played with have been at least decent so far. But I can see how much MORE fun it could be with actual friends and proper voice communication.
It's a soft limit actually! If the timer expires you lose the ability to reinforce and call in Stratagems but otherwise still allows you to complete missions and call in the Pelican to extract. Since extraction is not mandatory to complete the mission it's still worth it to push for any unfinished main tasks even if you die despite the timer running out.
Wait, you can get the xp and medals even if you don't extract?
Yes, as long as you complete the main objectives your mission is successful. You will not get samples however, the person holding them must extract and you lose a bit of the experience you get for extracting which is like 50 per Helldiver so not that much even. Those are the only limitations.
I've been playing on the Stomforge.gg WoW Mists of Pandaria private server. Apart from the latency, it's a completely smooth and technically impressive experience. Which is ironic because official Classic WoW and is unplayable for me. The game randomly closes itself extremely often, often just as I load it. Alt+Tabbing is pretty much guaranteed that it will happen. There are no errors, no messages, no logs, nothing. I tried every troubleshooting under the Sun short of reinstalling Windows. Opened a bug report. Nothing. I've been having this issue for a few weeks already. On a paid subscription. Very annoying. I must have reconfigured my entire UI from scratch about 10 times thinking it was an add-on issue. At this point I'm so pissed I may as well re-cancel my sub.
Private servers are the way to go, if only because you then don't have to give your money to such a scummy company. I've been on Turtle WoW for several years now and it's also really nice being able to dip in and out whenever I feel like, rather than feeling like I either have to play because I'm paying or that I want to play for an hour, but don't want to throw $15 at Activision.
Private servers are great except for a few things that I care about. First, even though I admit that this is not game breaking, the pings from Mars do bother me a bit. Second, populations are way more volatile and even a high pop private server can't compare to lots of Medium population Blizzard servers, even more so a Blizzard High server. And RDF is multi realm so there's always a group. Third, private servers are way more multilingual. I won't shit on anyone's nationality and everyone has the right to be there, but grouping up with people I can't understand is not as fun. Even many guilds are multilingual. That further divides the community. Fourth, I hate using add-ons from 2012 (or 2004...) because they're not nearly as good as the ones we have now.
On the other hand, I love free stuff and higher XP rates make happy.
Ah, see I play on generally Vanilla servers, because that's the era I prefer, since I started playing in 2004. I like the slow journey.
Haven't had much issue with bad ping myself, as I'm on a gigabit connection and personally I hate the Dungeon Finder and am one of those who believe it ruined the game. But again, I don't mind the slow pace at all, so looking for a group is just another facet of that.
I don't think that has to do with bandwidth at all, the distances are just too great from where I am. Truthfully, a 200ms ping is not a big deal for someone who doesn't play to be competitive, I'm just particular about some things.
I love and hate the Random Dungeon Finder because a lot of times the forced social interaction on LFG chat (which triggers my anxiety big time) stress me out but I totally agree that it completely trivializes the experience. I do believe that the absence of meeting stones is a bit much, though. If I was a kid that would be an adventure, as an adult it's a bit too long walking half the world.
I like how they had a group finder in Classic Wrath (I never played it back in the day) but you still had to form the group, chat, and coordinate the arrival at the instance. It felt like a good middle ground.
I would very much enjoy a Vanilla server that is 2x the XP rate. Which is actually the leveling experience for the first 25 levels in Season of Discovery right now.
Making a new post here, as it's already been 4-days and wanted to expand on my previous one without editing.
I finished-up Advance Wars 2 last night, which is a nice feeling, as I was pretty ready to be done with it. I somehow managed to sneak a Bomber all the way up to the Laser (the objective to blow-up), trigger my Super Power in the same turn and knock it out in one go. Ended-up with, I think a B-Rank on it, but I'm not overly concerned with my rankings on missions, just happy to have finished.
That said, now I'm feeling pretty torn. I want to put some time into DS games, two in particular, one that's already been mentioned in this thread, namely, Advance Wars: Dual Strike and Radiant Historia, but here's my conundrum. I have a DSi (two, in fact) and a N3DS. The N3DS offers me the remaster of Radiant Historia, but also playing DS games on it is kind of blah, as they look blurry; still perfectly playable, just not super great. That said, I could play the original release of Radiant Historia on my DSi, but of course, then you don't get all the bonus stuff that goes along with it. I'm not sure if that bonus stuff is worth it, but I do like that the 3DS also gives me access to plenty more games over the DSi, even if I'm only intending to play one or two at the moment.
Other benefit of the DSi though is that I have the XL and Advance Wars: DS is kind of difficult to see on the small screen of the regular DSi or the N3DS.
Unicorn Overlord
All I can really say is that this is the best Tactical RPG since Fire Emblem: Awakening. Every choice feels meaningful and fun. The combinations of equipment, units, and "loadouts" where you basically write wysiwyg logic programs for your units is simply a revelation. The characters are great, the devs were clearly trpg fans themselves and it shows. 10/10
Wolfstride
This mech-fighting RPG is full of SOUL. It does have many flaws as the steam reviews will tell you (which I agree with): slow-paced beginning with 2 hopeless fights before you can customize your mech, a pointlessly time-consuming walking zone before each location purely for atmosphere, and grindy minigames that takes up more gameplay time than the actual RPG fighting if you want funds to kit out your mech properly early on or the rare drops that slowly raise friendship levels. On the other hand, it's an expressive world that kinda feels like a 90s anime to me, all that time getting sucked in and getting to know everyone in town a little more day by day as the crew starts winning fights. It's fully voice-acted which is something I definitely find impressive for something of its scope and with changing dialogue lines for the main crew every in-game day.
So the pitch: a band of friends get back together after the recently deceased leader of their group gifts them a mech out of the blue. They aim to join the mech-fighting sport for cash, but the mech's a piece of garbage, the shounen protagonist pilot has zero training, the mechanic wants to sell the damn thing, and then there's Shade, the main character and manager of the crew. He's slick, dressed up in a suit with Kamina shades, and undoubtedly competent in funding their expenses and making the connections for their next fight. He's also a loser and he knows it, one who's running the hell away from his past, someone who is absolutely faking it until he makes it. I'd wager some of the game's flaws were intended if going a little too far just to showcase this aspect; Shade just having to go back and forth across town doing repetitive menial tasks to support the team, something he accepts because he has no goal besides drifting around so helping his friends achieve their dream gives him some purpose to his life.
I wouldn't recommend it casually, but the story and characters certainly had the sense of style I wanted from playing the Zet Zillions demo so I felt I got my money's worth.
Now there's some stuff I learned in Wolfstride's ending that is certainly changing my perspective of Zet Zillions' setting, some ramblings:
Foam Gun being the capital-D Devil for one. I am even more certain now that the Trash are actual people contracted with her instead of supposed meat clone robots unless this is a completely alternate setting. The game over lines imply it's just a simulation, but that's questionable too since Foam Gun as the narrator constantly addresses the player and Shade's life is portrayed as a video game. I had also expected something to happen to Knife on account of his nickname being Pineapples, but pineapples being a special currency is just a thing in this verse.
Deathloop
Meh. "Dishonored with guns" is a pretty apt description honestly. Since there's no non-lethal method and no stealth run save-scumming to worry about, you can just let loose which makes it pretty dang easy. Normally, I get pissy about meta-currency, but all you need is a silenced weapon and and auto-shotty for when things get loud. I dunno, I just didn't feel as attached to this world which felt smaller with even less attachment to the characters.
Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children
Just a small update (and possible cry for character advice help), I'm putting this game on hold even though I pre-emptively bought the second DLC missions because the first DLC with the clowns is hard as hell (stuck on the ambush level where they're deploying robots and rangers, but that's on me for not turning the difficulty down). Albus (Great Swordsman) and Heixing (Ranger) are my one man armies, Sion (Black Mage) and Irene (Battle Mage) can hold their own, but I haven't developed the rest of the team well enough to do more than scratch damage to the clowns. I also don't have anti-armor (Heixing is built for poison currently) which is bad because robots are common now and wiping my team.
Duelists of Eden
One last shill for this since it came out last week. It's $5, a deckbuilder/fighter hybrid as a PvP sequel to One Step From Eden. It's grid-based so movement is easy to understand and you can take whatever 8-10 moves you want into your deck to cook up whatever crazy combos you can think of. It is a niche fighter, but I'm happy enough to learn the counterplay and positioning against all those people that can absolutely school me. I found it easy to learn as someone who's not into the traditional fighters and only okay at platform fighters, but that just might be the OSFE experience talking. The discord generally says that the experience doesn't transfer over, but there's something to be said about general card knowledge and having a feel for 4 tiles away.
A few weeks ago I started playing Like A Dragon Gaiden - The Man With No Name. It was my first time playing any Yakyza/Like a Dragon game, and I enjoyed it so much that I blazed through it, and then Like a Dragon: Ishin, and am now deep into Yakuza 0. Pretty much every main game in this series is on Xbox Gamepass, so that's how I'm consuming them.
I'm really enjoying the side content, probably even more than the mainline stuff. There's just so much fun/goofy/funny stuff to do in these games. For example, right now I'm busy trying to takeover the nightlife industry in Kamurocho, which eventually triggered a karaoke battle against my main rival. Also, a child is trying to get me to buy him porno from a vending machine, which becomes a stealth mission. lol.
Interesting that you began with Gaiden, as see it really build on a decade of relationship the player builds with Kiryu (the usual entry points are either 0 or 7; I remember reading your impression about Gaiden but didn't act on it because #life).
In particular one of the last scene (the tablet one) hits particularly hard when you've played through 8 game as it with him.
Didn't you feel like missing out on a lot of things ?
I just went into it completely blind after seeing it on Gamepass and thinking 'that looks fun'. If I knew more beforehand I would have started with 0.