What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?

I started playing Stardew Valley because my daughter was asking about it.

Day 1: oh this is cute, you can build your little farm and get hearts with the villagers.

Then I start getting into optimizing outputs, planning crop schedules, upgrading equipment. Then I start getting into the missions. Then I start getting the cut scenes you hit at different friendship levels. Some of that hits hard. Alcoholism? Abandonment? Loneliness? Romance? What the hell is this game?

At some point you realize that (almost) nothing in this game is a throwaway. Everything is building toward something, and if something seems useless, you just haven't found a use for it yet.

Don't even get me started on the quality of the simulation. Plant a few trees and watch as it turns into wild forest. Some the algorithms are amazing.

One thing that is particularly nice is that my wife, my daughter, and I can all play it our own way (we play the mobile game on Android), but it gives us something to connect over. We share tips, talk about something funny that happened.

The other day I posted a topic about building an inter game trading mod for it. My daughter is excited to trade for things she can't get, so that will probably make it a reality sooner or later. One of my takeaways from that conversation was that multiplayer is fun and I should try it. Sadly it's not available on the mobile platform. Maybe they will launch it later, but getting v1.6 for mobile will be enough for me.

Last week I took a day off and used it to complete 3 games I'd been looking at for a while:

The Procession to Calvary. Really felt like I was playing a point and click version of those Monty Python animated skits. It was pretty damn funny and I enjoyed it a lot!

Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion: cute and fun. Don't really have much more to say about it, other than it made me smile and laugh a couple times.

Journey: probably one of my favorite experiences in the last few years. It is ridiculously beautiful, and being able to share some moments with other random players during what is mostly a lonely experience felt special. Will definitely be replaying it in the future.

I've got a lot more games in my backlog left to play, but we'll see when I manage to get some time to get through them :)

I got back to Legend of Grimrock 2 or more specifically some of the mods that have been built on top of it.

The base game is a decade old and a grid based dungeon crawler, unlike the first one it has more varied environments and does not take place entirely underground. The gameplay strikes a nice balance between combat and puzzles and the game has a nice atmosphere. And the story is there, basically.

For now I've settled on The Guardians - which is one of the bigger and more elaborate mods made for the game. This can actually cause problems since the game is 32bit and can only use 2GB of memory. The solution is to patch the executable to use 4GB of memory and to lower texture settings but crashes can still sometimes happen.
It is actually bigger than the base game and features several additional systems such as cooking, mining or trade. It has a darker atmosphere and is more difficult but that is partly due design decisions that I personally dislike, mainly putting a limit in the form of food on the length of the game.

There are several other mods I'd like to try, some by same author and some hosted outside steam such as Call of House Hardabar.

I wish that there more games using this format but the very few that came out generally didn't really grip me as this one as they did not manage the same semi open format, atmosphere and good focus between puzzles and combat.

Finally giving Cyberpunk 2077 another chance after being one of the fools who preordered and gave up after it's disastrous launch.

Is it a masterpiece? No. But Cyberpunk 2.0 is a really competent action RPG set in a highly immersive, beautiful world. I'm absolutely loving the story, enjoying the open-world, and having a fun time with the moment-to-moment gameplay.

I definitely recommend buying it if you're looking for something to play.

I'm playing Star Wars Outlaws. I know it's getting mixed-ish reviews but I am really enjoying it myself. It's not a groundbreaking game by any stretch of the imagination but it is enjoyable, beautiful, and nicely playable. Sure, like every other open-world game, it's kind of a long series of fetch quests but that's just the nature of the beast.

Motion Twin recently released their final update for Dead Cells after six years of development. I decided to pick up the last DLC I hadn’t bought yet (Return to Castlevania) and boot up a new save file after a long time away. It’s a well-polished 2D action roguelike, but what’s truly special is how it’s become a love letter to both AAA and influential indie games.

When I last played, there was a small reference to Dark Souls with a campire room in the first stage. Now, I can start a run dressed up as the commando from Risk of Rain, equipped with the King’s Scepter from Shovel Night and a Prismatic Deck from Slay the Spire, walk into the Psychiatrist’s Office from Katana Zero to find a new weapon from that game, and finally enter the Castle’s Outskirts from Castlevania.

They aren’t cheap references either; the Motion Twin devs clearly have played these games thoroughly. The Pure Nail from Hollow Knight rewards you for PoGoing and vertical fighting, which is a distinguisher of HK’s combat compared to other metroidvanias. Katana Zero’s weapon is not the main character’s katana, but the Throwable Objects you pick up in a KZ level. Anyone who has speedran Katana Zero knows how much proper use of throwable objects busts the game wide open. But in Dead Cells, they only regain ammo if you kill enemies, so you must use a different primary weapon just like in KZ. The Slay the Spire deck cycles between 4 “cards”, one for each character from StS and an associated strategy reflecting a signature deck of that character (play defensively with the Ironclad, build up DoT effects with the Silent).

They also separate their OG content from the other-game stuff nicely. Most of the features spice up the first stage (which is the least interesting since you see it the most) and the later stages are very much “Dead Cells”. Honestly, I’m surprised to see how far this game has come. It was a decent action platformer when I first came across it in 2019, but now it’s really a cut above the rest. If you like difficult action games, I’d recommend taking a look at the gameplay and seeing if that’s your thing. It’s very much a “do one thing and do it well” kind of game.

I've been having a blast playing Abiotic Factor with my friend group. It's a survival-crafting game thats set in a retro underground research/containment facility with a narrative. I've seen it described as a cross between Half-Life and the SCP foundation and they really nail the vibe. What impresses me the most is the huge handcrafted interconnected map. The most recent update added a couple new zones which have been very fun to explore which is where we currently are. Its in early access which may not be everyone's jam but definitely a game to keep your eye on if you enjoy that genre.

Just recently completed Nine Sols as well, which has been my favorite game this year. Pretty challenging but one of the best metroidvanias to come out since Hollow Knight. It adds a parry mechanic very similar to sekiro which felt weird in 2D at first but the combat may be my favorite of any metroidvania now. It also had some of my favorite boss battles in any game I've played - this one is definitely worth picking up.

I'm currently replaying Ori and the Will of the Wisps, which looks fantastic on an OLED screen with HDR. Playing it on hard difficulty with all the damage-boosting charms and it has been a fun challenge; I remember feeling like the game was a little bit too easy compared to the first game on my first playthrough.

I just finished Ghost of Tsushima for the first time after a friend bought it for me. Ive been looking forward to its release on PC for some time and man I was not disappointed. Combat is smooth, story is very well done, the world is gorgeous. I've already started new game + and jumped heavily into the multiplayer side of the game. I don't do it often, but I'm going to try and 100% this one, it was such a pleasure to play.

Other than that though I picked up Shapes 2, great, deceptively deep factory building game where the goal is to receive shapes as an input, color, cut, stack, them into another shape and then output them. I'm just a sucker for factory games.

I finished Darksiders Genesis this weekend. It was very meh. I don't think that genre works well with these games. And having it set so far in the past that it barely has anything to do with the main storyline makes it very forgettable and weak.

It was nice to get a little characterization for Strife finally, but it also didn't really develop much on it either. They played with the idea he had a dark past but didn't do anything with that or explain what happened at all.

All in all very disappointing. I hope they return to form with whatever the new thing they teased a couple weeks ago is. Hopefully Darksiders 4 with Strife having a full mainline game.

And then hopefully a final conclusion to the series that doesn't take a years and years to come out.

Because of the upcoming release of the MySims Cozy Bundle for switch I have been playing through the older DS titles. The gameplay is oh so simple, and I have got alot of nostalgia for it. But sometimes it's just nice to play a silly fishing game on my DS after a day of work.

I've been playing Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers. It's a player vs computer roguelike blackjack game. It's good but needs a bigger variety of opponents to fight. It's not the same as Balatro but if you like Balatro you'll probably like D&DG

World of Warcraft: The War Within took up a solid chunk of my 4 day weekend. Leveled a shadow priest with a friend 70-77 then got my assassination rogue to 80. This expansion is quite good, I like the story, I like the zones, I think class design is good enough, and I like the move away from borrowed power to hero talents.

What I've been reflecting on the most is where WoW fits into my life. I just don't think I enjoy it anymore. Even with severely undergeared characters the minute-to-minute leveling feels perfunctory. I get up from playing WoW and I feel "bad." Like my reward centers were just exploited with empty calories for hours.

I compare it to when I play other games, there's enough friction or difficulty that I play for an hour or so, put it down and move on with my day. Feeling like I had overcome something, made progress somewhere, heard an interesting story.

End game WoW sometimes delivers this, but the effort to get that level of challenge is high. Grinding arenas, battle grounds, dedicating time to a 5-man mythic or raid group. I'll probably keep playing a bit of WoW but it will likely be restricted to when a friend texts to play or something. Because chatting on discord seems like the only real value.

Dead Cells was on sales. I've never played it so pick it up. I like it quite a bit. It's a fun adjective (castlevania rogue-like souls-lite) game. I can see myself picking it up for a pit of time here and there.

Dark Souls is my current main game though I took a break for a week or so. Got lost in the depths, found a bonfire, progress made.

I have actually been playing some games I acquired years ago and never touched. I got them all at significant discounts or free, and they didn't seem to be appealing to me (which is why I'd only get them for a pittance or gratis), so they just sat in my inventory.

The Good:

Finally swapped to Mad Max after the fiasco with Metro (see comments for that on the latter end of this post). I did a full play through of Borderlands back when it was first released, tried getting back into it and the Pre-Sequel and part 2, so I figured this was just the whole foundation it rested on. It isn't, which was a nice surprise. I like that it's more car-driven (pun possibly intended) but still its own thing. The repetitiveness is starting to grind on me, but I believe I'm getting towards the end of the game. I haven't seen the movies, but it's kind of making me want to. There's some underlying story apparently, but basically you play in what used to be the ocean, and everyone's in gangs or dead. You know, typical story line.

The Better:

Desktop Dungeons was a shock for me. I started playing around with it and missed the concept. But after I gave up on the tutorials and started noticing how things worked... it got really fun. I honestly don't even really know how to properly describe it. You fight monsters, and each fight move is basically calculated ahead of time. They just stand there and you have to figure what combination of skills, items, and other shenanigans you can use to win. The village setup and quests are amusing, but the game is insanely way more in-depth than I originally realized. It took me a few hours before I finally could beat some of the "normal" locations. It's definitely a pen-and-paper-and-calculator with a spreadsheet type of game.

The Ugly:

I finally tried booting up Metro 2033... I just finished beating Kingdom Come Deliverance for the umpteenth time (and thus finished off the achievements), but tried replacing it with Metro. I must have got it for free, because the description isn't my cup of tea. I was trying to push through, but it's 1) so linear, it's basically a 3d platformer, and 2) it's crappy apocalypse. I am not a huge apocalypse type fan, nor of critters that make zero sense. The shooting part isn't even fun either, and I find walking around gives me a touch of motion sickness. I know the story is supposed to be awesome (heard I should read the books), but I just cannot get into it.

I've been playing Gundam Breaker 4.

It's Gunpla: The Game. Build a cool model and then go blow up other models with it. Here are the ones I've made thus far. With respect to gameplay it's very straightforward, similar to a Musou/Dynasty Warriors game but with an enormous variety of stuff to find and skills/abilities to customize. It's packaged as a linear campaign that then opens up into a bunch of mission types and difficulty modes, where the further you go along the more of a demand it makes on really honing in on how you want to play/what your build does. You acquire parts by just going after folks and wrecking stuff, with a scheme for leveling/rarity that lets you take the parts you like and build them out to meet the challenges ahead.

I like it in the same way I like something like Diablo - it's a fun thing to just sort of jump into from time to time, when you've got an hour to kill or just don't want to play something very involved. Levels are simple and straightforward, just hop in, smash everything, fight a boss, done. See what all you collected, tweak your build, do it again. You can use parts from just about every Gundam series out there, with more being added as they update/add dlcs. I can't speak to the story much besides saying it's very Saturday morning cartoon/2000's anime - I tend to ignore all of that in favor of just building neat things and seeing how hard I can push it. My favorite is the Bounty Hunting, where you can pick out builds from a list of what other players have made and have a big fight against them.

The customization is just fantastic. If you like gunpla it's like a machine for making everything you ever wanted with infinite paint and access to different techniques. You can use an airbrushing effect, make things metallic or plastic, add chipping/damage, throw on add-on parts, whatever you like really. Gameplay is smooth and simple. Weapons largely determine your moveset, but depending on which parts you pick you'll be able to do all sorts of other things on top - special moves from different shows, attacks you can chain together, support abilities, so on and so forth. The parts list is crazy huge, and you have lots of tools to change things like size and orientation of nearly any part. Then, when you've got one you like, there's a whole other setup for adding skills/stats to your parts to carry it up and through the harder modes.

If you enjoy Musou games it's like one of those but with a lot of options and a solid challenge. The standard/casual modes are pretty mindless imo, but it gives you access to a harder one from the jump if you want to challenge yourself the whole way through. Combat feels good, and finding a combo of parts/weapons to chain together is pretty satisfying. I'd recommend it if you like Gundam/mecha stuff and want a more arcade-y sort of experience.

Firstly, the game I've been playing most this week, Guild Wars 2. Like Notcoffeetable, I have been playing World of Warcraft's new expansion, The War Within, lately, but even though the expansion is an objectively good expansion thus far, I just can't do it. Not even the combat is that fun for me anymore. I did some dungeons and it was just so 'meh' that I'm actually moving on. GW2 has been such a great change of pace. Once I got past the mental hurdle of not trying to optimize everything and just have fun, I started to enjoy it a lot more. I'm a level 38 or so Norn Ranger and loving how the game encourages you to explore and craft just as much as it encourages combat, and the combat system is quite good for a tab target MMO. I'll definitely be sinking more time in!

Risk of Rain 2. I did buy Seekers of the Storm and I do like the expansion so far! The new levels (especially the music) are really good! I only played with Chef for a little bit and didn't unlock the other character yet, but the DLC boss is very challenging and fun (even if I got walloped). I know there are a host of technical issues with the game now due to the update, but I've honestly experienced none of them as far as I know. I guess I'm lucky?

Black Ops 6 Beta was a massive surprise for me. I'm still a whore for CoD games, even the shitty ones, and I fully expected this to be as bloated, as clunky, and as dumb as MW3, but I was honestly incredibly surprised. The game runs smooth as butter, the menus are WAY better, the TTK seems perfect for me, gunsmith was heavily simplified (for example, instead of choosing between 30 suppressors, you can choose "the" suppressor, "the" muzzle brake, etc.) and stat adjustments from attachments are toned down where it's usually just one thing improved or hindered instead of a list of stats. A couple of the maps were good, but a couple sucked and the spawns were pretty bad the whole first beta weekend, but that's what a beta is for. Beta weekend 2 is coming up this weekend and is free for everyone, so I do actually recommend this if you haven't played CoD in a while and want something that reminds you a bit of the older CoDs.

Up next is Squirrel with a Gun and Star Trucker. Someone bought Squirrel for me, so I'll try that out this week. Star Trucker has been on my wishlist since announced, but I'm going to wait and see how reviews pan out first. Usually I've been the person to buy games day 1 because I want to be part of the hype, but I'm caring less and less about it. I skipped Star Wars Outlaws so far, even though I'm a massive fan of Star Wars games and Ubisoft games, knowing I can get it in three months for at least $20-$30 cheaper. Now that I'm settling in to a time sink game a bit (Guild Wars 2), I'm going to try to be a bit more frugal with my game purchases and hold off on buying games day 1 a bit more.

Edit: initial steam user reviews of Star Trucker are out and it isn't looking good. The game seems to lack very basic features (like being able to view or remap keybinds, it has no controller support, lots of text issues, no maps in zones so you get lost, bad AI, etc.), so I might just follow this one and un-wishlist it with hopes it gets better with updates.

I've been hopping around a bit, but currently playing two things:

Everspace 2

Really liked the first game and loving that they moved away from the Roguelite aspect of the original game, something that never really inspires me to keep playing. This one feels more akin to something like Elite: Dangerous if it were arcade focused, rather than Sim-ish. It has RPG mechanics, such as leveling-up and attaching greater levels of gear to your ship (Common, Uncommon, Rare, etc), along with quests and sidequests, but everything is done from inside your ship. For instance, yesterday I needed to help some Miners (in ships) get into a Mine inside an asteroid, so I went hunting around as my ship for a power adapter in the local area to open it up. It also has crafting, which I haven't explored at all, but generally it's just fun to explore and jump from area to area, shooting bad guys and collecting resources. I've only played about 5 hours, but I'm looking forward to more.

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door

Something I've been meaning to play for awhile now, after really enjoying Super Paper Mario on the Wii 15+ years ago. I'm emulating Gamecube here on a small handheld, but it's the perfect fit for it, being able to pick it up and put it down in short sessions without having to work my way to a Save box is just great. The game itself is fun, breezy and easy, with little challenges here and there that I've found myself initially stopped-up by.

I had been playing quite a bit of Hitman: World of Assassination, but I've hit Colombia in Episode 2 and kind of lost steam. I need to get back to it and power through that level so I can get back to it.

Picked up Satisfactory during the Steam Summer Sale and finally got around to starting it two weeks ago. Somehow I've already put 85 hours in and despite 1.0 launching in 3 days, I have no plans to stop despite planning to start fresh in 1.0.... there's just always a new factory to build, an old inefficient one to tear down, hard drives to track down, logistics to settle, there's so much to do but I never feel overwhelmed.

I was warned this would ruin my life but I just didn't quite believe it, as I had heard that about Factorio and that only ruined me for about 100 hours then I moved on. To be fair, the alien encounters in that added an unnecessary element of stress and anxiety to an otherwise relaxing game. But turning them entirely off just felt too cheaty. I guess I like a little stress and danger, but just the right amount which is somewhere between none and all the time lol

My partner and I discovered cloud gaming (which I am convinced is the future). Basically, there are servers you can remotely use. So the server could be in France, Nevada, etc., and configured with the "correct" OS and hardware requirements. So it streams the rendered results to you, and you stream your controller inputs in (as far as I can tell). Some of them feel less secure or performant than others (this is just baked into the design), but overall, I like it. In any case, this is how I ended up playing the below:

• Diablo 4 - I distinctly find this boring. I don't hate playing it, but it feels like a game designed around not focusing and not thinking. This is partially due to gameplay (maybe I made things too easy) but I feel it in map design, setting (again, could be my bias), cut scenes, etc. RPGs I feel like are usually made with a lot of love for setting the scene, for getting you to search, for navigating dialogue, for guessing at intent. Diablo does none of that. However, they are really good at designing maps with minimal backtracking. And I never felt like I was grinding.
• Halo 1 & 2 - These were okay. I am not great at FPS's nor do I like to be, so once the levels got harder it was honestly kind of frustrating (more enemies, wider areas that made aiming more important, DRIVING!!). I did think the plot, despite being kind of unimportant, was also interestingly told. I thought also that the plot maturation from Halo 1 to 2 was very interesting. One debuts shortly after 9/11, another 3 years later. I don't think it was meant to necessarily be an allegory, but I do think it was some level of commentary that they made the aliens religious and playable.
• Dead Space the remake - technically I just watched my partner play but I screamed like I was the one with the controller. This was awesome. It was probably the only game that scratched itches for the both of us (partner likes F/TPS, I like RPG plot and horror). We both enjoyed the plot, the mystery, and the setting. It felt really prescient, and also kind of interesting to play after Halo since it has somewhat similar elements.

I've played some Littlewood over the last couple days, and it is everything a casual game should be. If you're thinking it's similar to Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley, you're not wrong. However, the days are not tied to real time at all, but instead to your actions. Talking to townsfolk doesn't cost any of this energy, but chopping trees, smelting, and so on does. You can leave the game idle almost anywhere without consequence, and come back where you left off. It has a little more depth to it than I expected it to.

I was inclined to try it because I've been playing Stardew Valley with my partner, and we had a few days we couldn't play together. But we've been enjoying Stardew a lot, especially with the Automate mod and a few others that are more quality of life updates than cheating. Saving an hour of in-game time makes a world of difference, especially because pausing isn't as simple in multiplayer.

Just finished "tactical breach wizards" a fun indie game. Sort of a turn based swat game battle starts with blowing open a door swat style, but all the characters are wizards with various magical abilities. Fun story, tight gameplay, highly recommended.

Heat Signature is a game from the same developer is a bit harder to define. It's a top down rogue lite game that plays a bit like Hotline Miami. You take contracts to sneak onto spaceships mid flight to steal things, rescue hostages, or sometimes hijack the whole ship. There's a ton of fun gadgets to bypass the various security systems and enemies abilities.
I bounced off it the first time I tried it. It's a bit of a fuck around and do what you want game, without a ton of structure. A lot of the challenge is sort of self imposed as you deliberately take more dangerous contracts. But it's sucking me in a lot faster now.