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What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
I started playing Elden Ring and am now ~25 hours in (for anyone familiar, in my case, that means I've got past Margit and Godrick, along with some minor dungeon bosses). I'm very much in two minds about the game though.
On the one hand, it's visually stunning. The aesthetic is very well achieved and consistent. Monsters/baddies are creative and scary, while landscapes are often gorgeous. It's also very satisfying in the way that if you can see something (e.g. a castle in the far-off, misty distance), you can go there. It'll take a while as you ride and you may have to fight/dodge things on the way, but you can go there. That's very immersive.
Combat is tough, but very satisfying when you get it right. I came from games where mashing the "attack" button is enough, but that gets you nowhere in this game.
However, there are huge negative points. There's little to no explanation, even of basic stuff, like tutorial-level stuff. You get turfed out onto a map with very little idea what's going on and almost instantly stomped by the first NPCs you come across. I ended up following the first video of a humongous walkthrough playlist, and that way I got hooked up with what, for example, a "golden seed" is. The game does a terrible job of telling you what all the stats and addins and pockets you have are for. You only get the privilege of levelling up and riding a horse if you go to a specific spot (that is not marked as anything special, just another save spot (to describe it roughly)). I was wandering around just getting stomped until I watched that tutorial.
Overall, the game feels very hostile to a beginner. It doesn't feel like a game that wants you to play it, if that makes sense. I understand that some people find that interesting/different, but I don't like it. It feels like the annoying people on forums who gatekeep membership of a fanhood unless you've watched all the side content and read up on all the lore. It feels like the game itself is gatekeeping you, which is NOT a good feeling, and being opaque and difficult for their own sakes is NOT a good thing. Change my mind (/s).
Great game, but huge shortcomings, and the fanbase is marred by the presence of (thankfully a minority) of fans who just chant "git gud" or "skill issue tbh" if you dare to voice any difficulty or question any of From Software's choices.
Souls games definitely have their own set of implied rules, and they purposefully don't teach them to the player. Apparently it's part of their charm, but it awfully looks like gatekeeping. I find that quite terrible because while I really like the genre (Bloodborne my beloved), you can miss entire parts of the game & gameplay if you're not the kind of player who obsessively try and read everything.
And mind you, Elden Ring is the most player-friendly game of the lot.
FromSoftware’s “Soulsborne” games are my very favorite games, but I totally get what you mean by the lack of guidance. On one hand, I’d agree with @0xSim that this is the most accessible of their games, but on another, I think it sometimes feels less accessible because it’s so huge. My first game in this genre was the original Dark Souls. While it did feel more obtuse, it was a tight enough scope (especially at the beginning of the game) that one could kind of just soldier on. In ER, though, the freedom and huge expanse of items, locations, and brand new mechanics like weapon arts, ash summons, and crafting is a lot to take in. For veterans of the “series,” it felt exciting, but I can completely see how it would be overwhelming.
I think some things that feel less obvious were better explained in previous games, so while they feel quite obtuse here, they were analogous enough to other older mechanics that veterans of the series didn’t mind as much. Per your example, I was confused about golden seeds at first, but once I read their extended description, I pretty quickly realized they were the the new way to upgrade the static “healing drink” present in every game of FromSoft’s, i.e. the estus flask from the Dark Souls games, or the healing gourd from Sekiro.
I’m not using that as an excuse, because obviously “go play all the other games first” is not realistic, and it basically proves your point that the game in a vacuum is still obtuse.
From an advice standpoint, I would highly recommend you read the extended description of virtually everything you come across by highlighting it in your inventory and pressing the x button / the square button (not sure what the KB binding is, sorry). They will go a long way in helping you understand a lot of the systems in the game. I’d even recommend going back and doing that for all the stuff you’ve already picked up.
I’ll also mention that the story and lore is absolutely obtuse and cryptic on purpose - that’s Miyazaki’s intended way to deliver the story, so you’re not missing anything there for now!
This might have been the video you already found, but I recommend watching VaatiVidya’s beginner’s guide for some of the most comprehensive spoiler-free beginner’s advice to get into the game. Yes, it’s annoying that you have to do this, I’m not defending the game on this one, but I promise it’s worth it. IMO, it’s one of the best gaming experiences in the past decade. Though again, if you ask me, it’s worth going back and playing the rest of FromSoft’s Soulsborne games, too. Happy to answer any other questions you have and keep it spoiler-free while I’m at it!
I think the Yahtzee review for original Dark Souls summarized the new player experience for Fromsoft games. And Elden Ring is a particularly bad entry point because its effectively the series greatest hits. When people say its the easiest game in the series, I think they're forgetting that they have Stockholm syndrome after a decade of abuse. The game isn't perfect and often needlessly esoteric. Half the time it feels like the only way to progress is brute force or dumb luck.
But in the end, Fromsoft games have a language and logic that you either learn by immersion or finding people that already understand. The best thing you can do if the experience becomes overwhelming is use every tool you can find, in and out of the game. A lot of forums are inherently dicks, particularly for this series. But there's plenty of people who want to help and see people succeed. Friendly summons are the life blood of the player base and you can learn a lot just watching them. Use cheese strats. Look up OP builds. Watch some challenge runs and (glitchless) speed runs. When you kill the final boss, no one can say you did it wrong because there isn't exactly a right way.
I don't think I'm going to change your mind here, but From games, especially when you're starting your first one, immensely benefit from having someone to talk to about it. I'm not sure how old you are, but think of going back to the 90s and talking to your friends on the school yard about the latest game. Otherwise, you can get a somewhat similar experience with Google.
Also, I think Elden Ring is the weakest of the From games and looking back as someone that started with Dark Souls when it first came to PC, I feel like Elden Ring would be utterly bewildering to start with. The lack of focus, bullshit enemies and bosses and the sheer vastness of the world add another layer of inscrutability to an otherwise inscrutable genre. The game plays excellently, controls well, has a lot of QoL improvements, but I don't feel like it's really the best to start with if you've convinced yourself it's a genre you want to get into.
Dark Souls is pretty old and clunky by modern standards, but it's simple and straightforward. You still need guidance with it, but once you're pointed in a direction, it's easier to get something out of. Though again, there are plenty of times in the game that you simply need to Phone A Friend for an a-ha moment. But as a fan of From games and the genre in general, when I was looking for a game like this to play this week, I went back to Dark Souls, rather than continue my currently 50 hour run of Elden Ring.
I upgraded my PC this weekend, from a 1060 GTX to a 4060 RTX, and spent a few hours playing... Deep Rock Galactic Survivor, the autoshooter spinoff of DRG. For an early access, it's already quite enjoyable.
I tried to activate the ray tracing in a few games and honestly I'm not impressed. I couldn't manage to keep the vsync enabled and the added input latency made everything floaty. All that for a few pretty lighting effects, definitely not worth it.
Upgrades used to feel exciting because new games were genuinely prettier. Nowadays they're just more demanding, and I think we passed some point of diminishing returns for graphics.
Any graphical capability beyond Factorio is just frivolous
I think raytracing as a concept has potential to be revolutionary for gameplay mechanics but it has fallen short due to it being used for 'cosmetic' changes like reflections on glass. I was thinking about raytracing for legacy games like Quake or Thief where lighting plays a huge role in an environment's design, and I feel like that would probably make the entire gimmick more worthwhile.
I just finished my first playthrough of The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante, which is a Life Sim / Choose Your Own Adventure / Visual Novel / RPG / Strategy game with multiple life paths you can take, and multiple endings.
Spoiler free explanation of the game mechanics:
The game is broken up into five Chapters representing the milestones in Sir Brante's life; Childhood, Adolescence, Youth, Peacetime, Revolt.
Every decision you make while playing can influence (positively or negatively) your relationship statuses with other characters, your personal stats, family's status, and eventually even your home province's stats. Many decisions can only be selected if you meet certain criteria, including having unlocked certain "Destiny" events. Speaking of which, in each chapter there are various "Destiny" events you can achieve if you meet certain criteria too.
Where the strategy element comes into it is that you can see the requirements for each "Destiny" event ahead of time, and when making every decision in the game the impact it will have on your stats/relationship/etc is shown ahead of time. So you can actually intentionally work towards unlocking certain Destiny events, but not all of them will be achievable in a single run because some are mutually exclusive, and there are a limited number of events in the game per Chapter to acquire stats and relationship values... so you have to prioritize which goals/events you want to achieve the most, and then hope you can get enough extra points to achieve any others. But sometimes you might need to sacrifice some of those side goals if achieving your main goal suddenly ends up in jeopardy after a bad turn of events (of which there are many).
But where it gets even more interesting is that everyone in this world (including yourself) can experience three "Lesser Deaths" where the person will resurrect afterwards, with the fourth time being a "True Death" where they don't. And certain decisions you make will lose you one of your precious lives, but since those events tend to be rather important, impactful, and can net you important stats and relationship status increases, you likely don't want to always avoid dying. So you have to spend your lives selectively, and wisely to achieve your goals.
And another interesting element in the game is that once you reach your fourth death (or a game ending where you die of old age), the Twin Gods in the game will give you the option of either accepting your "True Death" or restarting from the beginning of any Chapter. So in this way you can essentially roll back time to try to experience all the different life paths, Destiny events, and game endings. So the game also has a fair amount of replayability, but that replayability doesn't necessarily require you to completely start over from scratch every time either, which is often annoying to do in other games. And even if you still want to experience the exact same ending, but just change a major decision you made which you regretted the outcome for, you can do that pretty easily too.
IMO, the game was very very good. The world is incredibly interesting and unique, it was beautifully illustrated, and very well written. I was totally engrossed, and it even hit me in the feels on several occasions. I can't wait to try out some of the other life paths, and see some of the other endings.
Personal score: 8.5/10 - Highly recommend.
p.s. Chapter 1 & 2 are free to play, if you want to try the game out for yourself before buying it:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1460090/The_Life_and_Suffering_of_Sir_Brante__Chapter_12
Keep coming back to this post, trying to think of something interesting to say. I've got nothing, aside from wanting to say this looks totally up my alley and I'm glad you made your edit (you did, right?) about the 2 free chapters. Thanks!
You're welcome! And yeah I edited in that last part after I realized there was a free demo for the game after writing my comment. I didn't know that before I bought it. No regrets though. It was great!
p.s. If you end up playing it, let me know what you think. I am curious to hear someone else's thought on it. :)
Been kind of just messing around and not playing anything seriously this week. I'm taking a break from Lies of P because my wife is out of town for the week and wants to watch, so she wouldn't be happy if we played without her.
I did show my kids Monster Hunter World, which they've been enjoying watching, though I must admit, I'm not super into it. It's something to play that they can watch, but I really have no motivation to play it on my own and pretty much only if they suggest it.
Been still dabbling in Red Dead Redemption 2, which I do like well enough, but it's not entrancing me like a GTA game might, as in spite of living in a "Wild West" state, I couldn't give less of a shit about Cowboy's and the like. Plus I hate the fact that if I do a mission or anything, I need to make sure I set aside at least an hour, since I won't be able to save and quit anytime I want, so that kind of kills my motivation.
I did just grab The Outer Worlds from the Epic store and put maybe 30 minutes into it; it seems neat so far, but I'm not entirely sure I'm up for a talky game right now.
Balatro
I'm at around 115h of play time, and I finally unlocked all the jokers. Getting a 10M hand and getting $400 took me much longer to get than the others. I've also hunted most of the achievements, just missing the completionist ones and the challenges. Though I see only 0.3% of players have beaten the challenges so maybe I'm in for a long road there. I think I've done 7/20 so far.
Game continues to be fun and challenging and interesting. My only big issue is that Gold stake (the highest difficulty) is too luck-based. But there's lots of fun to be had at lower levels. I guess my medium issue is that there's no score preview built into the game. Most of the time I don't need it and can play by "vibes", but whenever it's close it's a bit tedious to do the calculation. Those aside, the dev really knocked it out of the park with having a lot of variety available, especially with the unlockable decks.
Dune: Imperium: Uprising: The Movie: The Board Game
The game design is very similar to the original Dune: Imperium but has some really great changes. Spies can be placed on locations that can let you go to a location that has been blocked by an opponent, and also offer some flexibility in locations you can send your agents (if you send spies to multiple locations on the board). There are also plenty of incentives to recall your spies, printed on cards. Sandworms can be added to conflict to boost your strength and double the rewards on the conflict card - but to use them you'll have to invest in obtaining hooks, breaking the shield wall, and then forgo collecting spice when visiting a Maker space. Conflict cards themselves have 3 "suits" and collecting 2 that match grants a point. So while there are fewer victory points written out on the cards as rewards, they can still add up as you win more of them, and with worms doubling rewards, sometimes points can be earned other ways. The main board is altered quite a bit for costs and effects.
I only played once, but I really enjoyed it. One of the other players has played before and he doesn't like the worms and thinks they are too swingy.
Magic: the Gathering
The full preview for Outlaws of Thunder Junction (OTJ) and its bonus sheet The Big Score (BIG) is up. Even though I don't play sanctioned events anymore, I still maintain the habit of reading through new sets and making lists on scryfall of the cards that I find "interesting" (primarily cards I think will be good in Modern or Pioneer, but sometimes just cards that have mechanical designs or art I really like, or make me laugh, or sometimes hate, or are a notable reprints). Anyway here's my list. Note there are also new cards for Commander but I don't bother reading those since I don't like that format.
Some broad thoughts on the set: I don't like the Wild West theme for MTG and I don't think Wizards ever should have done it, despite a segment fans asking for it for years (I feel the same way about the 1920s set New Capenna - they clash with the fantasy aesthetic that the game had been cultivating for 25 years). Like a lot of things the company has done in the past 5 years, this was a meme on r/magicthecirclejerking ...about 5 years ago. My God, what have I done....
I don't follow the story closely but I kind of get the main beats....a lot of planeswalkers lost their sparks and can't travel between planes anymore but portals (omenpaths) opened up and now anyone can. So we have a huge cast of familiar characters showing up on cowboy plane. Gisa and Geralf from Innistrad (gothic horror plane), Satoru Umezawa from Kamigawa (Japan plane), even former recurring flavor text hero Bruse Tarl from Zendikar (adventure+treasure plane....I know he got a card in Commander). It just feels weird! Normally when they do this kind of a mishmash it's in a Core Set and everyone gets to stay on their own planes and keep their own style. I guess they've been doing so many awful crossovers with other IPs they've gotten used to it and decided to do it with their own.
So I have a question about Balatro. Do I just suck? I consistently get to ante 6 but feels like the luck is just against me at that point, I'm not getting the multiplyer multiplyer jokers and have a hard time getting over the next hump of raised stakes. What its worth, I've 10 hours of time played.
Do I need to grind to unlock better jokers or what? I have a feeling that I just suck because no way is this level of lack of luck fun -- to anyone.
Like last game a rerolled like crazy anytime I had the cash to get the vampire joker which would've played well with my "make face cards gold" joker but no luck. And that was like four or five antes where I took every chance I could to check if there was a vampire joker at the store. Buhh... Maybe I'm getting tunnel visioned by my current strategy and am bad at adapting to the ever changing situation but gosh.
You don't suck, the first 20 or so hours are a grind, at least until you get a feel for the game and you unlock most of the jokers and playing decks. I found that for me at least in the beginning the Green Deck had the best results, until you unlock the other decks.
The best strategy for winning is ensuring that you manipulate your deck such that you get the hand that you want to play almost every time, that means buffing your cards, duplicating them and removing the cards you don't want. The easiest hand to do this with is Flush, so maybe try focusing on that. Mind your economy, try to get to 25$ as fast as possible to take advantage of interest and always maintain a minimum of 25$. Also, most rare jokers that seem OP need a very specific synergy with other jokers, that's why Vampire is very good but the chance of getting jokers that work with it is very low (Vampire+DNA+Blueprint is a good one, also Blueprint is the best joker in the game hands down so take it when you see it).
Lastly, don't sleep on the blind skips (always skip when it gives you a negative joker for example) and buy spectral packs whenever you see them, they can completely make or break a run.
Thanks for the tips, I feel like I've been pretty much doing what you said here. Though I didn't know which cards and combos are the best etc. I suppose I'll just have to grind it out until enough stuff is unlocked and I get lucky enough. I stopped with the skips because I felt I was using them too much which hurt the run overall, but yeah getting those negative jokers is probably a smart strategy.
(I had one good flush run, where I was able to get consistently just flushes but surprise surprise I barely got any planet booster packs and when I got them there weren't any that leveled flush, so I got as far as I got with level 1 flush. Infuriating.)
Edit. And of course I got my first win right after complaining with a beautiful five of a kind ace build. I now feel a little more confident in saying that maybe this game is a little too luck/grind based as don't feel like I learned a lot after the first couple of hours. Would be interesting if there're some truly skilled players doing fresh save/first run wins which would counter my argument (I don't think it would outright disprove my claim unless they're winning the game consistently). But then again, the game is cheap and I already feel like I got my money's worth so that shouldn't dissuade anyone from buying the game.
One thing that wasn’t obvious to me was how important money is in Balatro. The problem with skipping blinds is that you lose out on multiple payouts, interest and buying stuff at the shop. Once you have a good income it has a way of compounding, which in turn lets you buy more cards and booster packs, allowing you to strengthen your cards.
I also leanded that there’s a tier to card bonuses and multipliers, generally it goes points > + multipliers > X multipliers. It also matters how you arrange the jokers, you want to have the X multipliers all the way to the right so they get activated last.
Last it’s important to keep in mind you aren’t playing poker after the first couple of rounds. Things get topsy turvy and you can easily get to a place where a pair or three of a kind can beat “better hands”. You don’t know what the strategy will be at the get go, but as you build your deck, it’ll become apparent how you should be playing.
There are so many other small tips and tricks that aren’t explained, and you have to either learn by doing or watching some YouTube videos (which I initially avoided).
I've been thinking about your questions a lot. My gut feeling is that at the base difficulty it isn't as luck-dependent as you say, however I feel like a lot of runs that I lose will quickly exit my brain, so maybe the wins are just unfairly weighted in my memory? I do wish this game had a way to look through my past runs, how far I got, what my deck was like at the end, which jokers I got, etc. Like the Run History page in Slay the Spire.
For a point of comparison, I won my first run about 7 hours after I bought the game (real time, not sure exactly game time). But that might just tell us I got a lucky break earlier than you did. I didn't have any xMult jokers though, just flat mult. I used Vagabond and Trading Card to sculpt my deck (can be a bit of a nonbo if you discard first...), and Wrathful Joker, Raised Fist, and Supernova for mult.
Rerolling to find specific uncommons seems not really feasible. Even if you have your 3rd and 4th slot vouchers and cheaper reroll vouchers. There are 41 uncommon jokers available from the start (unless I miscounted), and uncommons only show up 25% of the time in the shop (according to wiki). In that sense you do have to get quite lucky if you want to find the really bonkers synergies.
A second data point on my experience with the game is that after 40h of playtime I had beaten the first 10 decks on base difficulty. So I definitely started winning much faster on average, but that's to be expected since I started learning what the cards did and didn't have to stop and read absolutely everything (though the latter 5 decks have more of a learning curve for what they do). I did also take a lot of time playing these runs out in Endless mode for the chance of unlocking stuff and also learning how busted your deck needs to really be to get anywhere in it.
I have no idea where I fit on the Suck -> Supergrandmaster continuum for this game though, so maybe these data points are totally useless. Certainly not the top cause I haven't produced an "e" hand yet. You have made me really curious how well I would do on a new account, compared to now. Alas, we need more stat tracking!
So, RE: characters showing up randomly in thunder junction
From what I've read about this set there's two reasons why -
First, is that one of the themes of the set is "villains" to match the cowboy/outlaw theme of the plane. They decided to make the plane empty pre-omenpaths to avoid any allegory to how the native americans were treated by colonisers, which has resulted in the set feeling a bit like "hey remember this minor bad guy from X set? They're here too now in a cowboy hat and wearing spurs!" to actually give the set enough cards.
The Second is (which I read somewhere but can't find again) that they're going to be doing crossover sets between planes about once a year. And with their release schedule it's got to be in a standard legal set as the rest of the calendar is now being taken up with Universes Beyond or rereleases and they got rid of core sets because they weren't selling well enough I believe.
1, This makes the western theme feel even less coherent... A bunch of characters who lived their whole lives bound to a single plane and they enter an empty plane and all start acting like rootin' tootin' cowboys for no reason. I'm sure they checked with multiple diversity consulting companies for this approach but it also kind of sketches me out. Don't the IRL colonizing types like to pretend America was empty too?
2, The Magic wiki page for the set mentions it's a "showcase set", for which they cite MaRo's article.
They have removed core sets and brought them back before... I don't think they'll do them again until they feel they need to cater to new players again. Right now they're making money hand-over-fist with complex cards targeted at Commander and Modern players.
Anyway this is bad news for me that they're planning on doing more of these but then again I haven't been liking their other sets recently anyway...
There's a great video on Balatro's design which goes into exactly why the developer chose not to incclude a score calculator in the game - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk3S3o1qOHo
Yeah I have seen it and I get his position/intention. Actually it's how I found out about that calculator on github.
I'm just part of the segment of the audience that believes I would be better served (would have a more enjoyable experience, based on the way I want to interact with the game) if I had better access to one.
Been playing Grounded...I am so addicted to this game. I've played 50 hours in the past 2 weeks according to Steams tracking.
There's so much to do in the game and I'm loving every minute of it. Instant classic for me.
I haveit in my wishlist and believe my 10yo daughter would love it too. But she just startedleqrning English as her second language. Home much speaking/text is there and what can be done in the game without knowing much English?
You won't get much of the story and it may be hard to tell what menu options or item names are, but I think it could be playable.
Also depending what her/your native language is, there may be a language option in the game. It currently has subtitles and menu language support for English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian Chinese, Thai, Turkish, and Arabic
Our language isn't there, sadly. I will wait for anothr year probably - she will get better in English by that time.
May I ask what language it is?
Czech. Very specific and not that much people use it. Not actually similar to any other (except Slovak).
I was playing this with a couple friends about a year ago and it was a blast, but they unfortunately got sick of the grind near the last 1/3rd of the game and we dropped it
Same kinda thing happened with Valheim so I think I just can't play survival games with them because a lot of the time I don't mind the grind.
It's perfectly able to play solo, somewhat easier in fact.
I also don't mind a grind if it's done well and I think Grounded is done very well.
I'd recommend trying it out
Played through most of Pseudoregalia, have one major key left but all the upgrades. I'm in line with most everyone's thoughts I see - combat is vestigial, and it could've had more area without hurting the pace. It also feels more rewarding right in the middle, when you have around two upgrades and you're trying to navigate on those alone. I saw some criticism about messaging and whether you "have" to have a particular upgrade to advance, but I've found it's generally clear? Or, the extra work necessary to overcome things just kinda tuckers you out in the right amounts.
There are problems, but the coolest thing it's obviously trying to channel from the late 90s/early 00's era is looking at some piece of platforming that you're probably not supposed to do, loudly saying "I CAN DO THAT", and fucking up the level geometry until it bends to your childish will. It totally delivers on that. Also cannot recommend a game enough when I click a game's trailer expecting the usual "9.0, 8.5, 4.5/5! RESCUE THE PRINCESS! JUMP TWICE!" kinda snippet eyecatch stuff, and then its trailer is purely schmoovin around levels.
I have a regular Miyoo Mini and there are methods for not getting hand cramps: I often play with one hand, so usually turn based stuff and I don't play long sessions on it. Not by choice, but just because that's how I play games these days, usually in 10-15 minute chunks.
I do want a 35XX H, but I'm waiting for a similar form factor with GameCube/Dreamcast. My Vita still hasn't been outclassed yet.
I get you, I also have pretty large hands, base of my wrist to the tip of my middle finger is a foot long. I just don't play super long, but I also don't grip super hard either when I do play and generally don't use the back buttons all that much, so the Mini kind of just "sits" in my hands while I press the buttons, if that makes sense.
The H looks damn nice because it just seems very pocketable. I like my Mini a lot, but feel like it requires a case to be in my pocket and I would rather have something I can just chuck in there without thinking about it.
I just recently beat Unicorn Overlord. I loved it, and even started up a second playthrough. The way you can program squads is incredibly satisfying to me. I think my only complaint is that it isn't harder. I think the default difficulties are fine, but the advanced difficulties could be really ramped up.
I also just started up Dragon's Dogma 2. I'm not far into it, maybe about 8 hours or so. I have two friends who both really swore by the first one, so I own Dark Arisen, but it did not hold my attention at all. 2 absolutely has me more invested. So far my only complaint is that the pawns are just kinda janky. The way they talk, their pathfinding, and the way they somehow always end up in front of talking npc's are all whack. They seem fine in combat though, and the overall combat has been fun, so I think I'm willing to overlook those flaws.
Defense Grid 2
I had started this a while back and it didn't really take off for me. I then played through Sanctum 2 and caught the tower defense itch, so I went back to this game and I loved it.
The game is great on Deck. It works well with a controller and reads (mostly) well on the Deck's small screen.
One thing I love about the game is that it lets you freely backtrack within a mission. You can restart any wave, as well as previous waves. So, if things start going south on wave 18 and it's looking irrecoverable, instead of losing and starting a whole new match from wave 1, you can rewind to the beginning of wave 18. Or 17. Or 16. Or 5. This lets you try out different strategies on the fly, seeing how they play out and whether they work. It feels very respectful of the player's time.
If anyone played the original Defense Grid, this is a worthy follow-up. I loved that one, and I love this one too.
Tiny Tina's Wonderlands
My friend group picked this up as our weekly multiplayer game after finishing with Sanctum 2.
I... don't love it.
I wanted it to be a lot more RPG-inspired and focused. Instead, it feels like a Borderlands reskin. It's not bad (it's... fine) but it's not what I wanted.
Also, maybe this is me getting old, but with four players and the game's flashy effects, I genuinely have a hard time telling what's going on when we're in the middle of fights. It's just pure visual chaos -- and I have my graphics set to
Very Low!I’ve been playing Xenogears on the steam deck. It is a squaresoft rpg from the ps1 era. I played it on original hardware when I was a teenager and always wanted to replay it but felt like it was too long of a commitment. Well, enter the steam deck with emulation that I can pause at any time (and take advantage of save states). I’m about 10 hrs in and it’s been very enjoyable. There are full motion video (anime) cutscenes that aged well. Although the battles are fun and challenging, the randomness of the encounters is annoying. The 2D sprints in a 3D polygon world looks surprisingly good still. The camera is controls are dated, just allowing you to rotate 90 degrees; sometimes it is difficult to find where to go. The menus feel sluggish.
This is a game that could use a QoL update. Even with the downsides, I just really love battling with the giant mechs, they nailed the sense of scale both when fighting and exploring.
I strongly recommend playing it with the best, most realistic CRT filter you can find; preferably one modeled after a specific tube. It will really help smooth out those super jagged pixels most of the time.
I had a bit of extra money in the coffers this week, so I decided to buy a game that has been in my wishlist for a while and picked up Hi-Fi Rush. While I haven't got very far in it yet (I got food poisoning and found it very hard to concentrate as a result), I have to say that I love everything about this game. The world, the art, the humor, the mechanics - it's just a blast!
I've only got so far as beating the Rekka fight, and I'm sad because I absolutely loved Rekka and want to see more of her.
Finished Sifu this weekend. I beat it once and then discovered there's another ending. Initially I wasn't going to go for it. Would basically require playing the whole thing again and the bosses would be a bit more tedious. But I discovered that it was more fun since I had gotten pretty good at the fighting mechanic and used to the timing of the various enemies. Ended up beating the whole game again to get the other ending. This was a great game!
Started Mario Wonder. I'm only a couple hours into it, but it's really fun. I like the online mechanic where I can see live players going through through the game as I play through it. And you can leave a way to revive each other. I'm a bit of a completionist and it doesn't seem like 100% would be that hard or tedious. So I'm looking forward to play more of this.
Jumped on Tetris 99 for old times sake since they had an event going on. Was able to grab a couple 1st place wins in about a dozen matches. Kinda proud that I still got it lol
I remembered that I also never played Advanced Wars 2 on Re-boot camp. So that will be next on my list.
Finished Nier Automata earlier today.
Got various joke endings but ended with ending C(and watched the others on YT because I didn't want to do that end segment again).
The game was pretty good.
The story took a while to pickup(halfway through ending A is where I started to get more interested).
Gameplay is ok to fine.
Music is pretty great, a few I didn't like (desert theme comes to mind) but almost everything else is really good.
I played the game with Japanese voices.
Story
This is where the game shines. Ending A was a slow starter, but the Become As Gods part is my favorite part of the game, sidequests made me spend a bit too much time, I wanted to skip most of them but with my friend kinda pressuring me to do most of them, and I ended up liking to do them in the 2nd half as well. 2B plays much better than 9S that's for sure. Ending B was where it got me excited about the story. 9S is a good boy. If I didn't know there were more endings and I were alone tbf I would've probably stopped at ending A, but you do need ending B to actually get the game, endings C/D are a good conclusion and watching D and E on YT I felt like C was the most fulfilling ending anyway. 2B was a much better character than I was led to believe by how people thirst for her, she ended up a character I actually caring for about, and actually got surprised when they killed her off. 9S was my favorite character, he's the guy that likes to joke around and gives the game around a nice vibe, and seeing him go from what he is to humans are garbage was strong. A2 I held up expectations for her, but she ended up having so little screen time that I can't tell much about her character aside from being the grumpy one.Despite all that I think the overall game is like a 9/10.
And now despite having a backlog I don't know what I want to play.
From what I've read, A2 is a character who came from a Japan-only Nier musical. I also didn't care much for her appearance but I don't think there was a better way to tell the story they wanted to tell.
Have you played the original Nier? I don't know if I could recommend playing it now; a lot of the reveals have been spoiled and even the remake is kind of a slog to get through.
Nope, though I do plan on giving it/Replicant a shot regardless, I recently undusted my PS3 and may look into Drakengard 3 and Nier(most likely will just play Replicant, though).
Stardew Valley, 1.6 update
This update really is fantastic. There are so many quality of life improvements over the previous version of the game with dynamic dialogue and seasonal events that change every year. I won't touch on all of the new features because that topic is spoiler heavy. What I will say is if you enjoyed Stardew Valley in the past then you'll really enjoy the new content.
Whilst you can play the 1.6 update on PC/Steam Deck it's still in active development for consoles. I strongly recommend waiting for the update if you're a console player.
Brotato
I've been playing this on the iPhone but it's also available for Android, PC and consoles. If you pick it up on iPhone/Android then make sure you buy the version with "Premium" in the title as the other version is riddled with "micro"transactions.
This is a similar concept to Vampire Survivors but it's far less rough around the edges. There are twenty rounds and within each round have to kill as many monsters as possible and pick-up the currency that they drop. Doing so gives you experience to level up and money to spend within the shop. Between rounds you select a stat to increase for each level up and purchase items from the shop. If you reach the twentieth round then you'll face a boss.
On the "danger" settings (harder difficulties ranging from 1-5) you'll see harder enemies and mini bosses. The first time that you beat each difficulty or beat round 20 with a character you'll unlock an item or another character. There are 44 different characters each with their own playstyle. It's a lot of fun although perhaps too addictive.
Persona 3 Reload
I've been playing this on Xbox via Game Pass. It's an apparently faithful remake of an old Persona game and it shows. The combat itself is decent and very similar to Persona 5 Royale but the in-game dungeons are randomly generated and very dull.
The main story seems interesting but a lot of the side content is just generic Japanese tropes. I'm trying to push through to finish the game.
Every time I play a Persona game it makes me think about how a good a similar game from western studio with a western focus and characters could be with the same kind of gameplay loop.
Alpha Protocol
It's a classic at this point. I mostly remembered hearing of it in the context of the closest game to Deus Ex when there weren't really any games like Deus Ex. I think it was in an ownership limbo for a bit where you couldn't legally buy it anywhere.
It's a spy game with a pretty good story and cast of characters. The gunplay tends to range from frustrating to ridiculously easy depending on how you spec your character. And most game play feels a bit dated.
But the real pleasure is the story, dialog, and decisions. Missions can be done in almost any order and the things you do in one effect what happens in others. As you kill characters, ally with others, build dossiers of info on people and organizations it really nails that feeling of building contacts, networks and reputation. I havnt done a second play through so I'm not sure how much the story changes, but it at least gives a very convincing illusion that my decisions have real consequences and that everything is connected.
I've been playing Heaven's Vault (Switch). What a weird, engrossing game. If I hadn't played an Inkle game before then I'm not sure I could have put up with some of the oddness. For example, certain exploration options or conversation choices disappear if you don't take them when they are presented to you. 80 Days was similar, but that is a more streamlined type of game, a text adventure with graphics. HV is a 3D-ish adventure game, almost like a point and click game. In fact, the heroine reminds me of Guybrush when she says "I'm not doing that again" after taking certain risky exploration choices (and here "risky" is gasp climbing over a knee-high wall.)
The way the game does location reveals is quite strange. Rather than finding a particular item or clue that tells you a new location, it's as if the location had a hidden progress bar, and finding items (any item, or translation or whatever) fills up this progress bar. When it reaches some threshold, the rough area of the location suddenly becomes apparent to our protagonists. Then if you find more items, the map area you have to search to find the new site shrinks. It gives the game a sort of procedurally-generated feel, but also maybe kinda realistic, since the items you may find in the game are not that important individually (except a few key ones, maybe, that do have fixed uses, so who knows) but rather the collection of them hints at historical events... or something. You search for locations are in the much-maligned "flying boat" part of the game, which is definitely the weakest section. Hey, at least it's atmospheric and chill...
The game has a few glitches sadly. The most annoying one is the overworld/flying navigation map can get stuck showing you the wrong location half the time, so whenever you bring it up you have to re-focus back to your current location. This happens often, and the only fix I've found is to exit the game and restart it. The translation interface can also get stuck showing words that won't go away (only happened once, another time it froze completely). There are pauses/stutters during exploration, camera angles that show you extreme close-ups of people's backs, or disappearing polygons - these are semi-frequent but not game-killers. The stutters may be due to the Switch being puny hardware nowadays.
Despite the jank, slow pace, and non-story main story, I'm enjoying the game a lot. The world lore is intriguing, finding and exploring new locations is great - the atmosphere of wandering around long-abandoned ruins is a strong point in the game's favor - and the translation mini-game is well done (kinda, it starts out weird but the more you play it, the clearer things become).
I've actually finished the main story once, and now I'm playing through a second time on New Game+, which lets you keep your translated words from the first play through. The adventure is quite open-ended and you get different story elements by making different choices. This was similar to 80 Days, where new locations or modes of transport opened up after multiple trips around the world. With Heaven's Vault the story ended with plenty of loose ends and mysteries unresolved, so perhaps some of those will be cleared up on another play through. Also as you get further into the game, and into NG+, the ancient language scripts you must translate get longer and longer. You have more knowledge of the basic words though, so it adds more to the lore of the game, as well as being more challenging.
I've also been playing Super Scrabble on the Game Boy. This is not a great version of Scrabble, the dictionary is an older edition and doesn't let you use newer cheaty words like Qi or Ag, and the CPU takes forever on its turn, but I need to practice on something because my son keeps winning when we play the board game.
Started playing Dave The Diver with my wife and daughter. It's a fun light game, like Stardew Valley but with a little more plot and structure.
Captain of Industry
Factory management with terraforming where you need to take care of your population.
It's in early access but the devs are amazing (multiple bugfix patches in a day) and very active on Discord. They just released a massive update and have another one coming.
I "beat" Radiant Historia Perfect Chronology. And by beat, I mean I beat the base game and got the true ending. I'm now in the PC new dungeon, but I think I need better weapons and armor. I was one then away from losing against the base final boss, and I assume the boss for this dungeon will be harder.
What a ride! What a cast! I said in the last topic that Stocke has become probably my favourite JRPG protagonist. In so many game, the devs are reluctant to give the protagonist much of a personality or character, and the PC tends to be the most boring part of the party. Turns out all JRPgs need to do is stop having fresh boys waking up in bed before the village burns, and start having more slightly jaded veterans instead.
The battle system eventually started getting a bit old, but given that it's pretty easy to avoid enemies in the overworld, it's not the end of the world. But it's a bit of a shame, because I did like it starting out. By the end though, I found myself wishing it was just a normal turn based JRPG. There were also more "guide dang it" moments by the end, which made sense, since you have a truly massive amount of nodes you can time travel too, and some quests aren't obvious. Like, I'm not sure how I would've figured out how to start that quest where you're trying to cheer Raynie up.
The twist was predictable, to the extent that not even Stocke was surprised. But I still like how it was handled, and it was also carried massively by the excellent voice work.
What a fun game this has been.
The iRacing grind continues! I've been doing a pretty good job of doing at least a race or two a week, and it helps that there have been a ton of team events lately so that I have more incentive to race than if I was just driving solo. I'm definitely getting better again after I lost some skill when I was only doing a race every month or something. I'm still trying to find a series that is "home" for me, right now I'm still jumping around to different cars, but I'll get there. I really, really enjoy the indycar, but those races can be pretty disastrous compared to something like a GT3 car, which can at least take a little bumping.
I picked up Slice & Dice this week and I enjoy it! It doesn't have the same addictive factor that Balatro has so far, but I think it's a nice change of pace if I want to stop seeing clubs in my sleep. The strategy is deep enough where it's definitely not weenie hut jr's, but it's also not over the top difficult; I feel that it strikes a good balance. My favorite part is probably the leveling up system and how that's handled. For those that haven't played, you have a party of 5 adventurers. Each has a class and each class has a unique die (d6). The faces might have attacks, defense, mana, special abilities, or blanks. After each fight, one of two of your adventurers gets to level up, so you get a couple classes to choose from that essentially make the character's die better or more specialized. It might get better attacks, the blanks might fill up, or they might get different abilities all together! The abilities range from simple attacks to attacks that do extra damage if a condition is filled, some abilities can redirect damage, etc. It's a little like darkest dungeon, where positioning and trying to balance damage is a key mechanic. It's a cheap and fun strategy game, I do recommend!
Lastly, the gameplay preview for Destiny 2: The Final Shape came out today. I guess it's not really something I "played" but wow do they have some great ideas for the expansion. I did however login today to play Into the Light, the new activity/story/weapons drop or whatever you want to call it. The new game mode is unique (to destiny) and pretty well done! It was a good balance of fun, but spooky. They absolutely shower you with rewards, too. If you haven't played in a while, I recommend checking it out (it's free, not another season).
I have been playing condor soaring 2 (while waiting for 3).
It's an sailplain/glider simulator and I'm loving it.
Okay the graphics are a bit dated but the flying itself is fun to do and the community also still seems pretty active
Last night I hopped on the Balatro train. Being PC/Laptop bound was one of the limitations for me; it's the type of game I'd much rather be able to play on the couch beside my partner while she watches a show or in bed while she reads. OOC I googled Balatro on iOS. Along with confirming that they will be releasing on iOS I found a guide for playing the current build on an iPad.
Snagged a copy on steam. Made a couple edits to the game's LUA files, airdropped to my iPad, and loaded the game in Love2D studio. Game launches, plays, and saves states seamlessly. I will be buying a copy in the app store when it drops but am happy I can play the game how I want to in the meantime.
I dislike games that use a standard deck of playing cards. I knew that Balatro wasn't like that but was still apprehensive. And damn this game rocks. In my second run I stumbled on the flush strategy and rocked up to Ante 6. Could have beat that blind as I was regularly getting 15k per hand but played a bad flush (was playing odds and had a bunch of evens) and ended up a bit short. I'm still scratch the surface and learning how to optimize my decisions but I appreciate how simple the main gameplay loop is.
I decided I'm going to get through Fallout 1, and shamelessly use guides to know what I'm doing. It's not a hard game, but it is internally under-documented with no useful quest journal to tell you where things are/track mission histories. It runs well enough on Proton in Steam (90s games are surprisingly robust on WINE/Proton), and my save sync'd so I'm just plugging forward for where I was after vault 15. I'm going to see about wrapping up the Replace the Water Chip quest in a few hours so I can get to the actual meat-and-potatoes Master quest. It plays surprisingly well, and I'm enjoying its revelations.
Fallout 3 and New Vegas are also back on the menu with minimal engine-level mods to keep them alive, since I haven' actually done a vanilla FO3 run. It runs at a nice 60FPS, which is great, and plays just fine. I did New Vegas similarly, but also hope to actually get into the DLC on these thoroughly (I did Broken Steel and The Pitt in FO3, but none of the FNV stuff aside from some GRA weapons).
Not isometric, I believe the correct term is 'top down' or stylized top-down much like pokemon. It does look very good though, however something tells me it's 'terrain generation' is quite basic in the sense of an early 2d roguelike where it's just one 2d array.
Traditionally for any roguelike a level is made up of a very basic array where a 1 is a solid block and a 0 is open air, with no lower or higher levels determined (it's essentially a 2d top down maze). I was curious here if they do something like this (i.e nethack) or something else like dwarf fortress where they do take into account different heights, but they show it in a top down '2d' space.
I think a better way to ask would be if you can climb walls and reach 'another level' of the map which is higher, so to say.