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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 have been playing Fallout 4 again and it just reminds me of my mixed feelings. Crafting is decent and exploration remains one of the best parts of the game. Sadly, the compromises are real. Dialog selections are basically pointless and I'm reminded how much I missed the cool things they did like low intelligence dialog, etc.
I've been looking for an excuse to play the modded VR edition of the game since Skyrim was absolutely better experienced through a headset.
I'd do it in a heartbeat, but it's what I heard about the dialog that keeps me away. Bethesda titles have never been able to shake that weird, uncanny Valley NPC experience that they kicked off with Oblivion, and it's always compromised how much I enjoy their games.
The Uncanny Valley is there but better. Pretty decent for 2015. The main issue with the dialog is that everything is dumbed down to a few words and often your character will end up saying something you didn't realize they were going to based on your selection. Combine this with your choices of dialog rarely mattering and it is a step down from previous Bethesda games. A mod fixes the first issue pretty easily.
Still worth playing in my opinion, but definitely a weaker effort from Bethesda.
Good to know. Well, I don't play Bethesda games for the narrative. If the environments are sexy and I can blow up mutant heads, I'll give it a whirl
I think this is exactly why I have better, more vivid memories of Fallout 3 over New Vegas, in spite of playing NV for twice the amount of time. Storytelling is great, but I'm a person with a terrible memory for that, but an excellent visual memory and I'm unlikely to remember any particular story beats or anything of the like. I will absolutely remember the random little discoveries I made while wandering around the wasteland and how I felt when that happened.
Yeah I would say those two things are more enjoyable aspects of the game. There is a lot of random and cool stuff to find. I stumbled across a kid in a fridge that I had never found before. The kid turned out to be a ghoul and I brought him home to his ghoul parents.
Every time I think about playing Fallout 4 or any of the newer games I end up playing New Vegas instead. Nowadays I actually think that The Outer Worlds is a better game (also made by the same guys who made New Vegas).
Definitely not a sentiment you hear often, why do you think so?
It's a bit more polished overall. I like the writing a lot more (I especially enjoy the tongue-in-cheek humour and the particular flavor of dystopia). The art is both technically and subjectively superior. The combat also worked a bit better IMHO; VATS always felt like you're a golden god when you can use it and you're a kitten when you can't. The companion characters are also amazingly compelling; Parvati in particular has stolen my heart, but I've got soft spots for all of them.
Thanks.
I recently got it from Epic for free and played for about 30 minutes or so, but I wasn't quite ready to tackle another Bethesda style open world game yet. Been also thinking about going back to New Vegas again, which I liked, but honestly doesn't hold the fond memories that Fallout 3 does for me. The writing and everything is absolutely better, but I feel like the exploration feels lacking, which is something Bethesda absolutely crushes. That said, I've left it installed on my Steam Deck for whenever I'm ready to fire it back up again.
Outer Worlds is a way faster game than any Fallout or Elder Scroll. It's both a shortfall and a strength. I would have liked more time to organically get to know the companions, but also I didn't want to spend 200 hours wandering. (So instead I played through it three times back-to-back)
Agree completely but I'll mention that I actually really like some of the companions in Fallout 4 as well. They can be annoying at times, but their backstories are really unique.
But like you said, the combat and humor of Outer Worlds resonated with me a lot more than Fallout 4 did, even if I ended up putting more time in Fallout 4 overall.
I always want to go back and play more New Vegas. Do you have it on Steam? Is it pretty playable or do you have some basic mods you recommend to get it running better?
Take a look at the Viva New Vegas project. It goes over a big collection of recommended mods and guides you through installing the ones you want.
At a bare minimum, you likely want everything up through "Base finish". This will make the game more stable and feel a bit more polished. The "Extended" section is where you start modernizing things like the UI and gameplay mechanics, and really polish those rough edges the game is infamous for. Everything suggested here is still very faithful to the original design of the game.
I'm having a hard time remembering how I last played it, but I think it was on steam deck and it ran just fine with no modifications.
Hmm, good to know. I'll have to fire it up when I get bored with 4.
Did the newest patch increase load times for anyone else? My wife recently started replaying this (after watching the show of course), and like two weeks ago the game ran fine and loading screens were unobtrusive. Ever since that hd textures update last week the loading screens have gone to like 30s-1min which is ridiculous compared to like 5s that it was before the update. Makes the game borderline unplayable when you have to wait a minute between every location or building.
I purposely have avoided updating my game because I play modded and I knew the patch would break my mods for limited benefit. It does seem like some people have reported a similar issue.
Is your wife playing on a SSD? There is a super simple mod that uncaps FPS just while loading and recaps it after. It significantly improves load speed on an SSD. Due to how the game engine works, things load faster the higher the FPS is, but physics is also tied to FPS so the game basically breaks if you play with uncapped frames.
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/10283
Oh shit that might be a good solution, we'll give it a try. It is running on an SSD but we had to cap the FPS to 60 because the menus become unusable at faster framerates. So maybe that FPS cap is fucking with the loading screen times. Thanks for the suggestion!
Yeah, the mod is super easy to use. Doesn't require a mod manager or anything. Just follow the directions on the site. It changes the cap to 350 FPS just for anytime you load a new area. Then caps back down to 72 fps in my case. Honestly, the game is borderline unplayable without it in my opinion.
I played it at release and, while enjoyable, still recall how weak the narrative elements were, and how annoying defending settlements became. So for this run I'm going all in on QoL mods right off the bat. The aim has been customising the sandbox for maximum enjoyment and so far it has been a lot of fun going off script and letting my whims guide exploration instead.
Yeah same, I would usually get Sanctuary setup in a way that I didn't need to worry about attacks and then ignore the minute men or settlements for the rest of my playthrough. That said, I finally did a title bit of their quest line this time and once you get the Castle you get artillery which makes for some silly fun.
Would anyone know if there is a mod that returns the Fallout 3 & NV style VATs? I honestly really enjoyed having the game pause and let me make decisions instead of it just slowing down time.
I got 4 on release and that with the dumbed down dialogue and some other issues led me to not finish the game or even get that far into it. I feel like this far along most of the issues have been patched/modded out and it would be worth playing once I can find some time.
That was like, one of the very first mods that came out.
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/531/
Just look up a list of recommended mods and use Vortex mod manager. It's crazy easy these days. You want a mod that fixes bugs and there is one that uncaps FPS when loading which significantly increases loading speed. Then there is one that at least shows you what you're going to say in dialogue. That's enough to enjoy the game for what it is.
I have mixed memories of Fallout 4 as well. The dialog was a big let down after Fallout 3 with your attributes never really impacting what you could do socially. My fondest memories were exploring and trying to find all the models of power armor and then spending my time exploring that highly radioactive dust storm area. The crafting was also annoying, I pretty much just used it to make purified water which I'd flip for more power cores.
It doesn't have the same memories as Fallout 3, stumbling onto so many weird little vignettes. In particular I remember my mind being blown when I could become a vampire or finding some of the creepier vaults and discovering their stories.
I agree, that stuff is still there, it's just not as good as 3 for the most part. I remember stumbling across some building in Fallout 3 that had some elaborate dominos setup you could knock over and watch play out. It had nothing to do with anything and I still thought it was the coolest thing to find.
Yeah, I also wanted to revisit this after the fantastic show. Or really, I very much wanted to play Fallout: London, but that's now indefinitely delayed thanks to an ill timed "next gen" patch. So I just installed regular FO4. A few minutes in it crashed to desktop, and I'm not sure I'll bother opening it back up.
Go to Nexus mods, install vortex and mod it. Vanilla FO4 is garbage. Or don't, it's a mid game from 2015. It's at least scratching the fallout itch for me since the show.
Yeah, I actually did install exactly one mod to skip the opening. It's said it was supposed to work fine with the latest patch, but who knows if that's what made it crash. But yeah, I think I'll just skip it and play something else until London eventually drops.
Got into the Hades 2 technical test and it ran flawlessly on the Steam Deck for my dozen runs. I know that it's a limited release of a fraction of the game so I'm not going to speak about story and levels.
But the gameplay is still fluid and responsive with rich environments and soundscapes. At first it feels very similar to the original, until you realize that Mel is far less durable and a little slower than Zagrius (I love the names but don't ask me to spell any of them). But you make up for it with a lot more tools and toys.
The boons are still great with a lot of returning faces, some borderline OP new abilities and a little fanservice moment when you meet one of the original gods. On that note the characters are still a ton of fun. Haven't yet seen the big bad but the writing glosses over the mythologicaly accurate drama and goes for an almost cozy family dynamic. I can't get over just how excited the gods get when you call and everyone trys to be the cool uncle/auntie. It's engaging writing and voice work and I'm never uninterested in a character, even if the boon sucks.
Also, my wife was pretty excited that "the unreasonably hot people" game was back but disappointed that most of her best boys were nowhere to be seen.
I do have a lot of reservations but it's all balance that will likely work out through early access. Difficulty seems way off for a returning, high heat player and that seems to clash with the way they seem to be telling the story. Not a fan of the pick-10 upgrade card thing and resource game with tool limits. Some glaring imbalance with boon synergy and the moon ultimate powers seems interesting but half baked.
In the end, it does seem like a solid game and it's still too early to say if it holds up to the original. I am split if I want to see more follow ups to the stidios other games. I love the Bastion, Transistor and even Pyre (#3 best sport game for me) worlds, but I think their strong point was to always go to new in interesting places with each title.
I'm still at it with Dragon Warrior 3 on GBC. I hit Ashalam and am struggling quite a bit there, especially with the Flying Cats (or whatever they're called) that StopSpell me, which is absolutely crippling and pretty frustrating overall. I actually ended-up going to the Monster Arena and doing some cheese/save scumming to build up a substantial amount of money to afford the new armor and weapons in Ashalam. It helps, but it's not a foolproof answer so far. I'm semi-considering switching over from playing on my actual GBC to my Miyoo Mini so I can Fast Forward and just grind out some levels to make things a little easier on myself. I probably won't, just because I'm enjoying playing on my actual GBC, but it's a tempting prospect.
I've also been on a State of Decay 2 run on my Steam Deck. I ended-up buying the first game last week or so, as I've already put a lot of time into 2 and wanted to see what the first game had to offer for only $5. Well, it's one of those series that really build upon each other and the second game is just better in absolutely every way, so I ended-up going back to it and I've been enjoying myself. It's definitely more of a relaxed game, because once you've done the gameplay loop a couple of times, you sort of "get it" and that's what the game has to offer, basically just scavenging and building your base and survivors, then eventually taking them to a new map and doing the same thing, so we'll see how far I get. I basically have until about Saturday to continue playing it, at which point I'll probably set it back down for a long period, as I'm going on a trip and not bringing my Steam Deck with me.
I started a new run at Valheim with some friends now that the Ashlands update is in testing. While the beginning of the game hasn't changed much I still find it super fun to build and explore. Since we know the game pretty well by now we often get over confident and get punished for it hard.
As soon as we found the trader I grabbed all the cash we had, jumped on a raft to make a greedy solo run to the trader and quickly got eaten by a serpent in the middle of the ocean. Totally deserved it!
We eventually got some iron gear and my friends discovered they could easily take on Fulings near the plains border so they decided to go explore a village and got completely steamrolled by the larger group there. Several deaths and lost boats later they finally got most of their gear back.
We've had a ton of fun and close calls taking on some of the mini-boss quests for Hildir. Really looking forward to getting through the mistlands again and seeing all the FUN awaiting us in the Ashlands. Hopefully I can keep avoiding all the spoilers for it online.
We recently played Returnal for our roguelike game podcast and boy do I have some thoughts.
Playing on PC can be a gamble if your system is going to be buggy or not, but if all the stars align and you're able to run the game relatively okay, then I'd say give it a look when it's on sale.
I don't think I've been as locked in and focused during combat sequences in a very, very long time. Returnal is a game that I actually woke up early to play before going to work, and was the first thing I'd do when I got home. It's such a captivating experience, it's just a shame that the PC port is pretty poorly optimized. I'm sure it plays just fine on a PS5, though.
Story and ending spoilers
The story is very interesting, but I don't like the direction it went about 2/3 of the way through the first act. There's one cutscene that sets the direction for where the story is nebulously headed, and I was really hoping that it wouldn't truly be it, but my fears were confirmed.
My enthusiasm for playing through a second time really got the wind taken out after rolling credits the first time. I get there's more to the story, but now it feels like all the cool stuff in the game is effectively worthless. I hope I'm wrong and that a NG+ run here will serve as an interesting spin on all the assumptions I made the first time through, possibly with some monologue references to the bosses and major objectives, but I really don't want to go on a big fetch quest for another unresolved ending.
In a way, I'm reminded of Hollow Knight and it's ending. Top notch gameplay with a "bad" default ending, but a "good" ending you can unlock after via a harder sequence. That sort of system really bugs me and is the principal reason why I haven't finished Hollow Knight multiple times. I would hate it if Super Metroid had a similar ending.
The more I reflect back on Returnal's story the more I think about Metal Gear Solid 2. Maybe the first ending is my Raiden moment that I haven't fully come to appreciate yet, but MGS2 had a similar feeling of massive disappointment only to be slowly won over throught the years. Now MGS2 is in my short list of all time favorites specifically because of that. Maybe Returnal will share a spot once I fully complete the rest of the story?
Brotato
Due to some house stuff going on, my VR room is out of commission for the moment. That was generally my daily exercise, so I had to find a replacement.
What am I doing in the interim? Well, I put a step aerobics platform in my living room, and I simply step on and off of it repeatedly while playing Brotato.
It's the perfect game for doing this for two reasons:
It doesn't require a lot of coordination, so I'm able to play well and step at the same time -- something I can't do with games that require more complex inputs.
I get so into runs that I literally forget that I'm exercising. The stepping goes completely on autopilot. I'm not consciously doing it at all.
I'll look down at my watch and realize I've been going for an hour and a half, despite it feeling like maybe only 20 minutes. It's the easiest, least frustrating exercise I've ever done. Granted, it's not high intensity or anything, and I'm under no illusion that my new Brotato fitness routine is going to make me skinny and ripped, but it's undeniably better than just sitting on the couch for the same amount of time. I'm considering that a win.
Once my VR room is back up and running, I think I'm going to keep the stepping in my exercise routine as well. It's so easy.
Oh man I completely misunderstood what a step aerobics platform was when I first read your comment, so I thought it was like a DDR mat and thought "holy crap that's genius, but also super masochistic".
But now I want to hook up a DDR mat and play brotato and other vampire-survivor-like games using it.
That’s actually a brilliant idea! The controls are simple enough that they’d map well to a dance pad and be (mostly) easily playable with feet. I kinda want to try it too but my DDR mats are long gone by now.
I have fond memories of playing super smash bros (very poorly) on the gamecube with a DDR mat maybe like 15-20 years ago, lol.
Forza Horizon 5
I love arcade racing game, played a lot as a kid (Need for Speed, Burnout, Blur).
I recently bought Forza Horizon 5, seemed to be the best arcade racing game around, lots of content.
Gameplay-wise, it's great. I love the different type of races, lots of vehicles (almost too many to be fair), they are fun to drive, it's arcade but not too easy, you still need precision. I like it very much! There's a real difference between the surfaces, the vehicles, lots of different races. It's great. I'm not a huge fan of the Hotwheels themed zone, but I can see the appeal for some players.
Gamedesign-wise, I HATE IT. First thing first: it looks like a damn mobile-pay-to-win game. Coins! Points! Events! Seasons! Don't miss it! 3 days left! You need to buy a car for this race! Just let me play already, don't shove it in my face all the time. I hate the story line and the cutscene. I don't need a scenario to race car around. I don't see the points in mission like "go retrieve an old car in a barn and go back in a truck". Smashing random boards just to gain credits/points/whatever is also completely useless - huge shootout to the dialogue line "Whoa, this is going to give us so much fame" (or something like this) when I smashed a random board under a bridge.
And above all else: I can't stand driving to races. Sure, you want to demonstrate you have a big open world. Who cares? Who enjoys driving in the dirt only to go to the next race? I don't want to waste 5 minutes of my gaming time just to go from one race to another.
I feel like I spent half my time actually racing, and the other half just going from place to place. In that regard, NFS: Hot Pursuit (2010) is still the GOAT for me. No nonsense, no scenario, minimal cutscenes, just pick your race and enjoy it.
I had a lot of time to game over the weekend. I might finally be entering my Souls era. It's a genre that always ticked the right boxes on paper but my introduction to it just put up barriers.
Stellar Blade
I only learned of this PS5 exclusive in the last couple weeks via The MinnMaxx Podcast. First heard about it when they addressed some of the contention around it because the main character is kind of trying to do a Bayonetta/Nier thing with a scantily clad lady as the protagonist. When they actually reviewed the game they found that aside from the character designs it isn't a horny game and highly recommended the combat. So I picked it up, a bit apprehensive but happy to support a smaller studio.
My initial impressions from about 4 hours of game play, right up to the first real boss (there is a bit of a tutorial/skill check boss around the 2 hour mark). There are two difficulties by default: "story mode" and "normal." I am playing on normal.
Pros
Cons
Dark Souls 3
So after several hours of playing Stellar Blade and finding my groove with the combat I was itching to play a From game. I am the type of person that owns every From game since Dark Souls but I haven't played beyond the opening in any game other than Elden Ring. I usually bounce because of the difficulty. I played a good amount of Elden Ring but never beat Magrit. I want to love these games. But I feel like I always made poor decisions that handicapped me early.
So I swallowed my pride and have begun reading everything I can about character building, and area walk throughs hoping to maximize my power at each point so that hopefully I can clear the previous barriers. And it is paying off.
I first played DS3 with a friend who is DEEP into From games. The kind of guy who can speed run Bloodborne or Sekiro without getting hit with the most basic weapon. So when starting he was like "yeah you could start as a warrior or knight but the wretched is the best if you're good." Which did not set me up for success, I didn't understand the wretched is good because it gives you the most most room to build a good character with the trade off being very weak early (and no ability to level before Gundyr). Suffice to say I couldn't beat Gundyr... I got extremely close which is retrospect was actually kind of impressive. This time I started with a Warrior class. OH MY GOD this game is so much easier. I pretty much made every beginner mistake fighting Gundyr and killed him on my first try.
Suffice to say I'm enjoying my time in DS3.
Elden Ring
My success in DS3 also inspired me to start a new game of Elden Ring. Previously I played a Confessor which I think is an okay class but I think the emphasis on pumping faith set me back a bit. I didn't put much time into it this weekend but I'm excited to try a build closer to my preferred playstyle.
This is the first time in a while I'm excited to play video games. It really kicked off with God of War (2018) earlier this year. But I'm hoping between Stellar Blade and DS3 I finally make my peace with Soulslikes. They tick all my boxes in terms of lore, itemization, and complexity. I think the combo of God of War and Stellar Blade opened my eyes to how I should approach this era of combat games. Now it's just time to git gud and clear out the rest of my From back catalog.
Played a bit more Minecraft with my kids over the last week. It has been pretty fun, and they have taught me a lot about the game. I'm still basically a noob, but I've progressed enough to mine a bunch of diamonds and supply all of us with diamond armour, tools, and weapons. I don't really know much about progression in the game, and my son has made a lot of weird contraptions around our base, like a cow farm on a single block where cows automatically die and are harvested, and a mob spawner that safely drops mobs so you can collect XP. The ease with which he solves minecraft problems is very humbling.
Other than that, I'm looking to do the Backlog Burner this month, so I'm looking at my card and thinking of next steps.
Yay! Happy to hear you are participating again. We have you to thank for the brilliant name of “Bingo Golfing” which has now ascended from an unofficial mod to a deliberately supported feature that @Wes coded into his new site.
I’m doing a standard bingo this time, but I’m going to go golfing for the November Backlog Burner.
The new features are great - I love how Bingo Golf has become fully supported! There are a lot of new and interesting options, though I actually had to reroll my card a few times, as you did, because I didn't read them all and I ended up with impossible cards, not once, not twice, but thrice! The funniest reroll was "video game released before you were born" which would not have given me a lot of options without finding my way to a very old-school arcade...
Though come to think of it my cousin is a pinball repair man, so I might have been able to count one of his machines, and would have given me an excuse to visit?
I had to reroll too — no worries!
I also coincidentally ended up with
Released before you were bornon my card, but I’m presumably a little younger than you, as I think I’m going to fill that with something on the ColecoVision — a system I’ve heard about but never actually taken the time to emulate.Also there’s nothing in the (already pretty flimsy) rules that says the games have to be video games, so maybe a visit to your cousin wouldn’t be such a bad idea? 😁
I've played the Aeon Genesis translation of The Adventures of Hourai High. It's a surprisingly well made RPG for the SNES. The translation does a pretty good job at preserving the comedy, and I particularly like the club descriptions. I haven't played too far into it yet; only finishing to the first two or three Hospo stories, but I appreciate all of the details they put into it. It has a pretty huge world with lots of NPCs who have interesting dialogue, and the world has a lot of design consideration put into it. The mechanical gameplay design is also really well thought out, and I particularly appreciate that there isn't really character classes; rather characters can be enrolled into up to three clubs which determine which skills or bonuses they get.
It's also got an early Hitoshi Sakimoto soundtrack, and it sounds excellent.
I was about to close this thread until I saw "Hitoshi Sakimoto soundtrack" at the bottom of your post. This game appeals to me - I just bought an Anbernic Arc emulator handset and am loving the chance to enjoy old titles while I sweat the pounds away on my exercise bike.
I'll dig into it once I finish Shining Force 3
Oooh, Shining Force is my favorite game series of all time. Are you playing through all three scenarios?
Starting from the top after my save file was corrupted a while back. I'm pretty pumped - it's the retranslated version that so far, I'm finding very interesting dialogue-wise.
I love the Genesis titles and am super keen to see how Camelot's last traditional title plays out. Which of the three scenarios is your favorite?
I actually still haven't had the chance to play through all of them! I was halfway through Scenario II when I changed computers and I'm still trying to figure out how to convert the save file so I can play it on my MiSTer. I will say that Scenario II is a notable improvement over the first one.
The patch on Scenario I doesn't actually re-translate anything except the ending, where it restores the Japanese one with the cliffhanger that was rewritten for the US release.
Ah - good to know! Funny, there likely aren't too many old school Shining Force fans out there. The OG Phantasy Star titles are my favorite of all time, and I rarely see people out in the wild who played them let alone know what they are.
I spent countless days just grinding in Phantasy Star II. I honestly thought they were better than Final Fantasy at the time. I didn't have access to the first game but for it's time it was a masterpiece, and I still love the art. All of these games also had a huge impact on my taste of music. I really loved Motoaki Takeuchi's compositions in particular; I found the way he approached composition to be really interesting and his slightly arranged Shining Wisdom soundtrack is incredible if for nothing than the absolutely bonkers vocal intro track ("Music is... the best").
Shining 2 has an outstanding soundtrack - the town theme being my favorite. I just had a look at Takeuchi's project list and am impressed that the same composer created soundtracks for both GunGriffon and SF titles.
I'm a bit shocked that he/she wasn't responsible for SF3. Also, would you consider Wisdom the kind of game that holds up in 2024? Could I play and enjoy it still?
Wisdom is not a very good game, sadly. It's easily the worst of the Camelot Shining games. The system for running is very irritating and it needs to load every time you switch between tools, which happens all the time. Beyond that, it has a ton of puzzles that have fairly obtuse solutions. It's also the game that made Takeuchi give up video game soundtracks because of his creative frustration with the project (which is understandable because that soundtrack is crazy and doesn't match the series style at all).
Shining the Holy Ark is very good, though. And Motoi Sakuraba made some really good music for the series.
Good to know. I'm nostalgic for that era of Sega-- likely because it's what I played when I was 10 -- but similar to the Dreamcast years, there was an emphasis on making an impact and creativity that I sorely miss in games today.
I guess that's what Indies are for now.
I'm still playing FFVII Rebirth and it's finally really clicked for me at around the Gongaga/Cosmo Canyon point. I made a post last time about how much of a mess the first 15 hours of the game are, and im glad that didn't turn me away completely because tinkering with materia and builds for the party is really engaging. I just wish combat was overall a little more challenging because even on Dynamic it feels like I'm rolling everything. Occasionally a boss will come along that makes me have to stop and think tho, which is always nice. All the open world and side content is still totally uninteresting, but I find myself doing a lot of it because that's the best time to mess with party combinations and work on weapon skill masteries.
Having a lot of fun with it overall tho.
I started playing Forza Horizon 5. It's the first racing/driving game I've played since my hand injury in May 2020. I've missed the genre a lot. Which is why it's very disappointing that I ended up in a lot of pain as a result of playing the game. My gimpy hands may not be up to playing this type of game after all (with a steering wheel or with a controller).
On a related note, can anyone replace the extensor tendons in my hands? I'd sure appreciate it!
I recently got myself a steam deck, and my friend convinced me to give Sekiro a try. She knew how much I loved Ghost of Tsushima, so she was sure that I'd love the combat in Sekiro. I was a little hesitant at first because I generally don't enjoy souls-like games. I tried Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3 for a bit, but for me the combat felt clunky.
Oh man I have a love-hate relationship with Sekiro now. I have just defeated Lady Butterfly and it felt great, but god damn did the repeated attempts feel like shit. For now, I feel like the combat really clicked for me in that fight, and I'm looking forward to the other boss battles the game has to offer.
I'm also not a huge fan of the fact that death is punished. I know in the grand scheme of things the things I lose aren't that bad (just some coin and exp I can grind to get back), but it does still suck.
I am however also super excited for Ghost of Tsushima to come to steam for May 16. I'm just hoping it'll be compatible with my steam deck.
I just picked up Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom and it is really fucking good. I'm closing in on 3 hours with it and while when I first started playing it I could tell it was fun and intriguing, it has now clicked for me and I'm finding it really fantastic. It is absolutely wonderful how much developers can do essentially using only two buttons (plus D-Pad/Thumbstick), the amount of moves you can do and depth of platforming, plus skill and timing required is just, so good. I'm not even a 3d Platformer person; I've dabbled with Mario 64, beat Mario Galaxy...18ish (?) years ago because I felt obligated to and dabbled here and there with others of the genre, but they have never hooked me. Taxi absolutely has its hooks in me and I'm loving playing it and very eager to return for more as I work on mastery of the moveset to get myself around the levels. I don't often find a game where I pump my fist in the air when I accomplish something I've been trying to do, but this is one of those ones for me.
There's a demo on Steam, which is what convinced me to drop the $17 on it and I'm glad I did.
I played One Shot for the first time. It was super good, would highly recommend if you like quirky games like Undertale, Omori, Doki Doki Literature Club, etc etc.
Whole bunch of stuff since my last post, lesse:
World of Warships had/has 2 campaigns both with their own mini event, April's event was an Operation (PvE) where you technically could get the ultimate reward (a premium ship) for free (just need to complete harder and harder missions, by level 5 it gets unfair), it overall was fun (again, endgame got unfair); meanwhile May's campaign came with a Roman event, which is a series of generic mission (like, at least force Italian ships), and you're only getting a guise (basically a new VA) for free, needing to pay about 40 bucks for the main prize (basically the cost of a tier's premiums).
Like I said, gameplay is good, monetization is... not the absolute worst, but still bad.
I remembered that I picked up Maneater on psplus when it was the free ps5 title for a month, so I played it.
You're a newborn shark (as in, right as the tutorial ends newborn) who has to kill and eat her way to adult/elder/mega-hood and evolve in... very odd ways to get revenge o the human who killed your mother.
The game itself is good but rough: the narrator is good but some lines repeat way too often; the difficulty starts off pretty hard since you're a pup while there are 'gators around, only to basically disappear after becoming an adult; the controls can be kinda broken into underwater and above water which the game doesn't handle too well; evolutions looks good, have their own identity (shadow is poison and speed, bone is durability², bio-electric is stun with a touch of damage) but quickly boils down to one explore loadout and one combat loadout (why stun when you can face tank everything?); it does have way too many collectibles, but the upgraded sonar highlights everything from so far away it doesn't become a needle in a haystack.
Thruth Quest is more of the same, doesn't really fix anything but the adds are fun (just grab a map for the Questers), but I don't think it on it's own is worth quite the base price (15$), but is good if you got the base game for free.
While I did critizise it a lot, I still did 100% both it and TQ in the end.
Yeah, the game's a lot of "good, but...", if you can get it for 15-20 bucks, go for it.
I also started Murdle, a daily deduction browser game.
Each day comes with a murder, here are your suspects, weapons, and locations (and motive on some days), you have exactly one murderer and everyone was isolated and can't share a weapon or motive.
Like wordle, you get one shot at solving the murder.
It's fun and quick, and trying to get a streak going is way harder than it looks...
Last game I just started is Dr.Robotnik's Ring Racer, a Sonic fangame, it looks to have a lot of stuff to unlock going off the challenge screen, but already I can tell it's both pretty complex and that it has Alien Resurrection'd (- Player Expendable) itself.
I bought the book version of Murdle a while back, but I completely forgot about it so haven’t actually played it. I’ll try and track it down and finally give it a chance.
That Murdle game is pretty good! Once I discovered the note book feature it all made sense, otherwise it seemed impossible.
I just started A=B, a programming puzzle game in the spirit of Zachtronics. It's $5 and worth checking out if you liked TIS-100 or Exapunks, but play those first.
Finally playing through Dark Souls 3 after playing a bunch of Elden Ring and defeating the final boss in Sekiro. I'm loving DS3 so far, after the initial hurdle of getting used to the game after coming from Elden Ring. Really looking forward to all the bosses to take down in this game.
I'm still plodding through Divinity Original Sin 2. I was reading lots of great things about Baldur's Gate 3, but I'm waiting until a PC upgrade before I play that. So in the meantime, I went back to DOS2 because I never finished it the last time I picked it up. I'm now playing the Definitive Edition, and the gift bag "cheats" have really helped keep my momentum up a bit longer. But I'm running out of steam again in Act 2 and I fear I may abandon it again.
It's a great game, but my time is really limited and I don't feel there are any shortcuts without putting it on Story mode and cheesing it (which isn't really fun). I sometimes only have 30 mins to an hour to do any gaming, and this can sometimes be just enough time to check a few barrels, get into a tricky fight and then mess with the inventory. And then my gaming time is over and I've barely progressed through the story. Does anyone have any tips to keep my momentum up and actually finish this game?
No tips here, just commiseration: I too lost steam multiple times in DOS2. First time I played, around Act 2 and then again I'm Act 3.
I adored DOS, but 2 just ends up feeling like a slog a lot of the time to me. I'm not sure if it's because it's bigger or the new combat mechanics, story, terrible inventory management or what, but I just dread going back to it.
Though I also have a similar problem to you in that I generally game in 10 to 30 minute chunks, so getting into these big RPGs anymore can be a real challenge.
I definitely think the new combat mechanics and inventory are part of the problem for me. Whittling down armour becomes a pain, and it's something I much preferred about the first D:OS game. Inventory management is a pain because it's so big and you constantly need to find new gear to stay at the right level. Some of the most powerful items are good for a few levels, but that's it really, just a few levels and then they're useless.
And the game is just too long for me. I appreciate that this is not a problem with the game per se, but rather that it's not suited to gamers like myself who don't have a lot of gaming time. The trouble is, finding those shorter more digestible games really restricts you to some of the indie games in genres that aren't necessarily as interesting. I want to play these kinds of RPGs, but I don't want to take 2 years to finish them. There's not an easy solution to this though.
Yes, exactly. Plus there's just so much going on, it's incredibly easy to lose your way or become overwhelmed and ultimately feel directionless, ontop of feeling like I need to manage an overwhelming inventory and an overwhelming amount of skills. After taking a long break from the game, I find it damn near impossible to come back to my 90-hour save or whatever it is. At the end of the day, I end up feeling disappointed because I did absolutely adore the first game, so I feel like something is wrong with me regarding the second.
One thing I am finding that is completely the opposite that I'm currently enjoying is Dragon Warrior 3. It's very simple and straightforward, there's one thread to follow (so far), no real skills to speak of and everything is just simple. It's really hitting right, right now and just fits into where I am in my life currently.
Yes! The quest log isn't very structured and you lose track of what's really important and what's just a filler quest. You also feel like you need to do every quest to ensure you're not underleveled for big encounters.
I do love the game, but ultimately I've realized that it can't capture my attention in the same way that games like Mass Effect and Skyrim do. The quirky tone and humorous dialogue is fun for a while, but it doesn't draw me in and make me fall in love with the characters. Mass Effect is my all-time favourite franchise, and those games have actually made me teary at times because I got so invested in the story and characters. I know D:OS and Mass Effect are very different games, but ME is a benchmark for how much I love a game. My characters in D:OS don't mean half as much to me, which is a shame. Hopefully Baldurs Gate 3 will be an improvement in this respect.
Yeah, exactly. With the quests and the combat that's often a component, which as you mentioned, you feel obligated to, it just takes ages and often feels like a slog when you need to wear down Magic or Physical Armor. I know fights often went the same in the first game due to lack of it, but dammit, liked teleporting people into oil and lighting it on fire immediately.
I actually much prefer the light hearted nature of D:OS, over Mass Effect. I did enjoy ME and ended up playing though and completing the first two completely, but I have a poor memory, so I'll be damned if I can really tell you anything about either game. In that regard, I prefer D:OS just because I remember the mechanics better, as well as some of the sillier aspects of it. But, much as I love D:OS, I haven't mustered any interest in BG3, just because I was so... Disappointed in OS2, though I'm also feeling a little bit "over" D&D as a concept, so that has something to do with it as well.
Panzer Paladin
Retro-style melee platformer with the Zelda II-style standing/low passive block. Finished Hard Classic with pretty good impressions overall as far as music, pixel art, and game feel with each stage being a bite-sized 10-15 minute run and destructible walls being placed at just the right areas to satisfy the part of the brain that thinks there must be something there. That said, it still runs into the retro issue where spikes/pits are an instant kill which can lead to some issues like getting hit mid-air which kills all your momentum along with only 2 checkpoints (halfway and bossfight) and 3 lives per stage (without 1ups). It also has a Zelda BotW-esque inventory system (without the inventory cap) where you're encouraged to consider weapons expandable by throwing them at annoying ranged enemies or breaking them instantly to unleash a spell, but I figure most people, myself included, simply stick to tried and true melee. The game kind of sabotages itself in this aspect by encouraging you to hoard your weapons early in the campaign to use for upgrading max HP.
The Knight Witch
Metroidvania with bullet hell and deckbuilding aspects. Early on, regular damage upgrades are better than spell cards due to mana scarcity until the mana cheat cards come in (+mana on kill buff card, 0 cost mana gen card, and/or full mana gen card that dumps a 3 mana brick in hand) at which point spells takes over until 100% completion where the final two max EXP upgrades give fast passive mana regen and 100% bullet crit rate which even things out. For most of the game, I went with a cycling deck with mana cheats and cheap fire-and-forget spells while maintaining a weapon summon. The true final boss is a massive difficulty spike though; I managed by switching my cycling focus to a "Grant 1 armor if you have no armor" card, but I'd strongly suggest 100% completion to reasonably have enough power.
I like the protagonist Rayne; despite the cover art showing her with a scowl, she's positive, responsible, happily married, and steps up to defend everyone despite having been kicked out of the Knight Witches for lack of talent 11 years prior because they've mostly gone AWOL in the present. Her personality also comes up in the morality system: since Knight Witches gain power from people's belief and thankfulness towards them, Rayne's called to hold a speech after every mission where she can either follow instructions and deliver PR-approved propaganda pieces or she can be open, honest, and critical about the issues she's encountered at the expense of less support/EXP (though the difference can be gained back by paying currency). The ending choice leading to the true final boss has her decide that despite everything she's gone through with the politics and infighting, she will make sure the problem is handled instead of having enough and going home with her husband.
Take Me To The Dungeon
Deckbuilding Hentai game that isn't actually a roguelike (just the dungeon structure being Slay the Spire style), about 10-ish hours for a first playthrough. You construct a deck and augment the cards with rune effects before venturing into the dungeon with X mana per turn gameplay.
What makes this different is:
Not much gameplay replay value though unless you're interested in deck-crafting, no ascensions or anything; might be some value if you're trying to see all events and event choices dialogue. Story is what you'd expect from isekai'd pervert meets girl adventurer and they team up (tactician/fighter) to beat a dungeon for its wish artifact. I thought the background lore was a little interesting though.
Background Lore
The normal end leads to a timeloop that returns to the prologue. Uma tries to wish for her dead sister back after the MC returns home, but things go wrong and she turns into the demon Mona while her sister becomes the demon Pamela. They get sent back in time long enough that Mona isn't really responsive besides being thirsty for the MC which leads to his groggy ass being summoned again. The loop breaks in the other endings; bad end where Uma loses to Mona and can't make her wish, or the good end where the MC is honest with Uma about her sister's fate and helps her process it.
My Burn Deck
Not the best and can run into defense issues, but it easily deals enough damage to clear the game. Just stack Burn runes on all your damage and take these 3 core cards:
Pyroblast is obviously a run-winner, it multiples burn and scales off it. Add splash damage, upgrade the main ability, and put double-cast on it late game.
Spirit Break spreads DoT to other enemies. Upgrade the main ability and/or put double-cast depending on how much mana you want it to be.
Rest is 2 cost healing + next card free which allows you to mana cheat Pyroblast. Add status cleanse for increased safety and Charge to further increase Pyroblast damage.
I like Pick Up Stone with max surplus and armor to gacha armor stacking. Bloodseeker for hp recovery and Blizzard to counter mimics are other good picks.
Been playing Stardew Valley for the 3rd time, but this time for the 1.6 update. The developer, ConcernedApe, added so much content and released it as a free update when this could have easily been paid DLC content. I'm playing co-op with my partner, but it supports up to 8 ppl playing together. It's been quite fun. I really enjoy the variety of gameplay from farming to cave diving, and I love how much efficiency can return greater profits.