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

After a sojourn through the PlayStation store with my five year old in an advisory role, I am now playing Dave The Diver. A very charming indie game in which Dave dives by day, catching fish and harvesting other edible sea goodies; then runs a sushi restaurant by night. So that's it, resource management and fish collecting. Or is it....? Maybe something weirder lurks in the depths of the Deep Blue Hole off the coast from Bancho's Sushi bar. It's on free for whatever level of PlayStation Plus I have and is definitely worth a look at that price. Even Yahtzee didn't hate it (spoilers though)

The five year old is playing the latest Ratchet and Clank on it's easiest setting and has declared it "the best game ever"

I have finished Witcher 3 including DLCs. It was quote some ride! I have played it since beginning of March this year, so it comes up to half a year! I play one game at a time, this was really long time. It was very worth it though.

I have finished the game afew years back for the first time ever on my Switch Lite, the base game. Since I got Steam Deck, I knew I would like to play it once again and finish it on PC (Steam Deck) as well. Both times after speaking my friend and heeding his advice I went straight for the highest difficulty - the Death March. This is how the game should be played. It is very challenging but also very doable if you pay attention to everything that you have in your arsenal. And when you're done (woth the fighr, quest, boss, game...) you feel very satisfied.

The game launched in 2015 I believe and ot stays strong to this day. I would even go as far as saying there is no competition in this sector of RPG genre - you can't play better game overall. The story is there and is captivating. The world is there and it's atmospheric. The RPG things are there and are perfect. You name it, the game does it great.

Witcher 3 got next-gen patch on PC but I played classic version because I didn't want to spare that extra power on my Steam Deck (giving up battery) for nicer graphics. The game looks great on the small.display even in the classic version where you can go higher in settings and still get better battery life and less fan noise. I could play for 1.5-2.5 hours on one go depending on daytime (brightness).

What a game! I'm glad I gave it another go and this time with DLCs. There are great and have tough boss fights. I mean really tough! I'm probably done with this wonderful game as I put around 350 hours into it over those two playthroughs. Just on Steam Deck I clocked over 200 hours for base game and DLCs together.

And there is one more thing I have to add. I got the game for around 8€, which is 200 CZK. And I gor over 200 hours of gameplay. Since I kinda look at games from the "hours of gameplay per money paid" perspective, this is probably the best game I have ever bought. This is if we don't even count how great the game really is!

In Balatro, I just unlocked my 150th Joker (just need to buy the last on in a game...). I'm working through the decks with all stakes. I've cleared through Blue on all decks and have cleared through Gold on the Checkered deck.

I also recently finished Tears of the Kingdom and let me just say thank God. I accidentally forced myself to clear the mob wave ahead of the final Ganandorf fight three times because of my lack of food after the first time, and accidentally resetting to an autosave prior to clearing after the second time. In all, the final stretch took me about 2.5 hours and two play sessions to clear.

I also started Arkham Knight, still pretty early in the game. I have to say, I'm understanding the criticism of the batmobile. It's very clear the devs just really wanted players to play around with the vehicle. Every puzzle in the first section is solved by the batmobile. As soon as you get into a bit of a groove, the game is like hey what if you used the batmobile again?

But it is an enjoyable game so far, and runs pretty smoothly on my PC

Astro Bot
If you played the free Astro’s Playroom then this is just a whole bunch more of that. I’ve heard some say that it’s similar to Super Mario Sunshine, and I agree. The colorful graphics and ease of play makes it fun and addictive, yet pretty easy all around. Easy in the sense of, why is it so damn easy? I still enjoyed it, and will probably keep up with the next one. It’s just fun to experience. The friggin controller, even on the lowest vibration setting is so damn annoying sometimes though.

The Last of Us Two Remastered: No Return
I had to get back into this game after years of avoiding the story since it came out. The first time I beat it, the emotion stuck with me for weeks, and I just couldn’t pick it back up because of it. This time, with the arcade-ish style of No Return, it’s just a good time to chuck Molotovs at zomboid fugal things and set trap mines to see the other factions of humans blow up all over again. It’s so difficult to just finish a run on the moderate difficulty, that even when trying Grounded mode, I end up lasting maybe one or two rounds. You can be almost any character, there are really great maps, and the creativity to complete a round is endless. It’s just more gold coming from Naughty Dog. I highly recommend it.

I have enjoyed this thread for so long as a lurker, finding so many hours of awesome gameplay because of your tips, I know feel ready - oh almost obliged even! - to play along :).

I found a way to get geforcenow up and running on my steamdeck, which I used to play the seemingly graphically intense game Shapez 2. That has been a lot of fun. A true wormhole, effortlessly consuming my gaming hours! My only gripe might be the pacing. I’m unlocking new features way too fast and the in-game explanations are not that great. I have now unlocked wires, and am just not smart enough to know how to use them. Guides are talking about ‘building the make-anything-machine’ which is so much above my Shapez skill it’s not even funny.

To my surprise, Sniper Elite 4 has managed its way to my gaming library. I thoroughly enjoyed Doom 2016, but was looking for something a little more laidback? Somehow, sniper 4 fits that mold. Planning a kill takes time, slowly moving across the map to get the perfect look, shooting, and then moving again as to not get caught. The graphics are so over the top gruesome, I somehow don’t really register it.

To top it all off, I’m dipping my toes back in the Final Fantasy XIV pool where I have spent hundreds of hours over the past few years. My wife is catching me up in the MSQ, so hopefully we’ll soon be able to run new dungeons together. Maybe that will lessen my dungeon anxiety ^^. Oh, and our in-game marriage is pending!

I just finished playing Dark Souls 3, and I really enjoyed it. I'm pretty familiar with the FromSoft catalogue at this point, and to my surprise I liked this game almost as much as Elden Ring. The tighter experience of having a relatively linear path to follow through the game, albeit one that is very hand-crafted, was very enjoyable to me.

The combat seemed to be just as good, but I played through half the game using just a dagger, so I can't really comment on the other systems.

I'm not sure if I'll tackle the DLC. Don't have too much motivation to continue playing through the game I think.

Astro Bot. If you have a PS5, go buy this right now and don't look up anything about it. It's an incredibly tight and inventive 3D platformer. It's very cute, the mechanics are both simple to learn, but deep enough to be satisfying to even the best platformer players, and the environments are so meticulously crafted that it's absurd. Each of the levels is pure eye and ear candy and each level was completely unique. In addition to the main levels, there are a number of secret levels that up the difficulty to almost the level of kaizo levels. Additionally, I don't want to spoil too much around this, but there are levels themed around some more iconic playstation franchises and those are the absolute highlight of the game, to me. This is a must play and easily the best game I've played all year!

Besides that, I've been messing around with giant modlists in Skyrim and Oblivion. I tried Lorerim, one of the more popular Skyrim overhaul packages, but didn't really like it. I then tried Nordic Souls, which I did like! It's a good balance of keeping the feel of skyrim while adding more and overhauling some systems to make it a less bland experience. I haven't played too much as I've just been playing Astro Bot, but I'll go back to it soon. I also have thousands of hours in Skyrim already, so if I don't get hooked on a mod package, oh well.

For now, I'm off to play even more Astro Bot. I am definitely going to 100% this game.

Been going through the logistical whiplash of Slime Rancher 2 and Satisfactory 1.0 and it's a good time.

Slime Rancher was recommended by a friend that teaches Montessori and it's not something I'd normally play. I understand it's in early access, but compared to other comfy farm games its not nearly as nearly as engaging or involved as I'd like. Very few meaningful structures, crops, resources and upgrades and lacking overall verity to the world since its all admittedly adorable smiles. I'd recommend My Time at Sandrock or following Fields of Mistra if you're looking a new Farm/Build lo-fi game.
HOWEVER, my 3 year old loves it. She wants to take the SteamDeck to school to show her friends all her happy slimes. We play it every other night and I'm using it to teach her how to count her slimes, identify their colors and associate that with what they do and eat. She also recognizes their facial expressions and know when they need to be fed.
I'd also like her to understand that we crashed the economy by min-maxing production and macroeconomic or industry policy does not prevent bad actors from flooding the market with plorts, eventually conpromising the livelihood of every other small family slime ranch, giving us an opportunity to buy out those farms in order to corner the industry and set prices as we please. Don't think were there yet.

On the flip side, Satisfactory has become an incredible complete package and I don't mind paying twice for the steam version. I first tried it around the time fluid systems were introduced and dropped when it got interesting. Didn't want to burn myself out before the full release but kept an eye on development. (Side note: Coffee Stain had some incredible community management and transparency throughout that time. Remember a whole Dora the Explorer trailer where the community managers finding new content through their office.)

Have always been a big Factorio buff. Got multiple saves in the hundreds of hours and will be taking leave when Space Age releases. So I genuinely went into Satisfactory thinking it was a low effort clone. I know the scale and complexity that I expect in these games to be and could not conceive the technical complexity existing in 3D without substantial effort. It turns out that effort is over 5 years of continuous development with a full team.

I think the game ended up in a nice middle ground between the laid back process/farming games and hardcore Factorio. They are fully leveraging the 3d format and giving a lot of attention to the aesthetics while allowing the modding community to accommodate for more complex players (see Satisfactory+). I'm the spreadsheet nerd playing a game because it looks nice and I'm building for vibes over efficiency.

Seriously, not a lot of people will want to hear about how i got a 12% increase in lubricant production by refactoring my petrochemical modules. But anyone can appreciate biomass power plants bolted to the side of a cliff or my radioactive fuel facility being suspended by power cables between 3 mountain peaks. Reminds me of when i would spend hours making solo minecraft builds.

I'd say the game is fairly new player friendly. The tutorial does a good job introducing systems and communicating some of the expectations. There's a moment of sink-or-swim when the numbers of the first big objective show but you realize that its not so bad. Resources are unlimited, there's no time limit, there's plenty to explore and discover if you're not immediately ready and every structure is fully refundable. Worst case, nothing stops you from running a bare minimum production in the background so you can get the stash or tech you want.

There are still minor issues: I hate that I'm limited to a 1-3 merge and split system. I cant set up a global grid layout. There isn't even a simple signal and logic system. Basic signs need quarts for some reason. Enemies are laughably impotent. Alternative recipes are such an amazing part of the game but are a slog to find with RNG. Inconsistent automated vehicle system.

Theres a lot of little things to improve but it not going into 1.0 needing any major content or performance fixes. I hope they start working on a sequel in a few years. Would love to see a Sanctum 3 as small project before that. Its a great small series that needs more love.

Kind of in a lull right now, really.

I've still been playing Shenmue which is alright, but honestly just makes me want to go back to Gothic more than anything. It's an interesting enough game, but I don't think it's ultimately going to keep me engaged for much longer, though I probably will still play more. The QTE's are a bit of a joke and come out of nowhere, as well as require you to act more quickly than I am able, but mercifully repeat quickly if you fail, so there's not really a fail state to the game from them. The fighting is, fine, I guess? I'm not one for memorization, so I'm unlikely to continue working on any of the moves. I do enjoy the fact that you really need to "live" in the world to make progress. Asking people you know about things and where you can find something and every time I've felt a little lost, I just remember I can ask some people and consult the various district maps. I love that it's all diegetic. I may still continue with it further, as in spite of feeling a little bored with it, it is charming.

I've also been playing a decent amount of Shining Force recently. I made it fairly far when I first bought a Genesis Mini like 5 years ago and always intended to go back and play it on one of my emulation handhelds and I'm finally doing that; I've found a cool shader which makes the game look like it's on a really shit TV from the 70's and honestly, that's wonderful. The game itself is fun and I'm very much appreciating how simple it is. I've recently tried to go back to Disgaea 4 and much as I really like that serious for a variety of reasons, that one is tough to play because there's just so much to it. Shining Force is aged, but it's so straightforward, it's been hooking me in the small moments.

Otherwise, I've been trying to find something to play in terms of PC games, so I've been flitting around with various things. I'm thinking about trying to invest some time in Deus Ex: Revision, but I'm not too sure about it yet as someone who's been playing and replaying that game since it's initial release, I'm unsure I like the changes. As previously mentioned, I may also go back to Gothic if I have the motivation to work out the kinks to get it running on my Steam Deck again; I'm not sure why it stopped, as it played great for the almost 10-hours I spent with it on there until suddenly it decided to stop working.

Otherwise, I don't know.

Demon's Souls: I made good progress this weekend, Tower Knight and Armored Spider down. Now I'm progressing Prison of Hope (3-1), The Tunnel City (2-2), and Island's Edge (4-1). I really like the Nexus/Archstone structure. It makes it so easy to progress an area, leave, try a different area, and really mix up the environments you are in. I like the format of Dark Souls games which trend more linear but Demon Soul's "hub-and-spoke" really works for me.

God of War: Ragnarok: I took quite a long break from this game but revisited it this weekend when I began wanting a story. I was immediately impressed with how lush and beautiful the environments are. I also really like gameplay loop: fights dudes, solve a puzzles, hear a story. I find the Atreus sections kind of a slog, but they're alright. I'll definitely be putting more time back into this game.

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor: A pretty cool Vampire Survivor-like (are we just calling these "survivor-likes" or "bullet heavens"?). Not much more to say, it's vampire survivor except you're also mining through rocks and collecting different currencies to buy your upgrades. Progression feels slower and map or character unlocks seem to be less generous. I'll keep playing it, it's an interesting take on the genre.

Magic: the Gathering

Full DSK spoiler is up. Here are the cards I find "interesting": https://scryfall.com/@Danger/decks/5d39c75d-3e8b-4edc-a36a-8cbfc642f0cb

I HATE the flavor of this set (80s horror). It clashes with the high fantasy aesthetic of Magic even worse than Streets of New Capenna (20s gangsters) and Kamigawa Neon Dynasty (cyberpunk). Worse than Outlaws of Thunder Junction (wild west)! Thankfully they don't lean into the 80s-ness in all of the cards. But some are really jarring. Baseball is now canonically part of the MTG multiverse. Can't wait to one day see "Jace Beleren's Rookie Card" get sold for over one million real American dollars. Ayy lmao. Subtle reference.

Brass: Birmingham

Finally played the top rated game on BGG. 2 plays so far, at 3p and 2p. Like many great board games, it's a lot of information to take in up-front. Feel like I'm just starting to wrap my head around it. Very thinky, have enjoyed it thus far. My favourite part is how turn order is always updated each round, ordering from player who spent the least to most money in the previous round. If you're in last place you can try to spend just under what your opponents did and get to go first next. And each round is 2 actions, so getting to do 4 things in a row can help you achieve quite a lot without being disrupted.

Finished Bloodless and Laika: Aged Through Blood; both of them feel like games with a vision behind them, yet they also feel unsmooth in gameplay and sorely missing quality-of-life things, like a dev's first game where they're reinventing every single wheel instead of taking notes from their genre predecessors. I don't think there's much essence either as they both follow a "3 main missions then the final dungeon" structure. The games' atmospheres are very nice though, so I think watching a playthrough of a skilled player would be a better experience than playing through them.

Bloodless

Tomoe is an old ronin who was once known as The Slasher, but has since given up on bloodshed and has now returned to her homeland to fix her past mistakes. The game's defining feature is Tomoe's dash being a parry which allows her to defeat enemies by shattering their weapons with her armguards which does feel great. The unfortunate downside of this though is the game overcompensating for it through many, many unparryable attacks and overlapping attacks from multiple enemies. There is a skill upgrade to counter unparryable attacks by attacking right as the red gleam starts shining and retracting, but since the melee system is deliberately crappy with no hitstun to deemphasize it, it felt finicky enough that I couldn't consistently pull it off and very high-risk since enemies partially regen their break meter if they land a hit.

On the plus side, the game has a very nice retro pixel aesthetic and deliberate color choices, along with a story about stopping the cycle of violence and death shown through Tomoe's atonement and her quest to redeem her wayward nephew.

On a very specific downside, the late-game upgrade that lets you shatter boulders that were blocking your way is a ki-attack that costs 3 ki-pedals to cast which is the max amount for an unupgraded ki meter. Naturally, you'll have to build it up through combat, find a save point, or waste a potion slot on a ki refill.

Laika: Aged Through Blood

It's the post-apocalypse, the Bird Empire is invading, Laika is an immortal warrior who respawns with her motorcycle whenever she dies and is sent to fight them. I don't regret playing the game, but it's crazy how many gaming design sins it commits:

• One-hit death: Land on Laika's head? Dead. Take a bullet instead of blocking it with the bike? Dead. Get hit by an explosive at all? Dead. Due to this, all the bosses have to be perfected and half of them are the "can only damage them when they're vulnerable" type which is a pain in the ass for making a single mistake. It's also unfortunate that the bosses have to be designed this way since Laika has a crazy amount of DPS by spinning to reload and mashing fire which instagibs the final boss.
• Mandatory weapon choice: Laika starts off with 2 weapon slots and can upgrade to 4 (I finished the game with 3 slots). One of those slots has to be reserved for the shotgun since it provides a recoil boost jump that's necessary to get around.
• Resource grinding for upgrades: Pretty much all the upgrades need a lot of mats and you get what, 4 from each resource point which has to be shot at and and drove over to pick up. Already questionable and on top of the game's motorcycle balancing system and the previous thing about one-hit deaths.
• Crap sidequest rewards: The only reason to do sidequests is for the dialogue. The actual reward is 5 materials at best and a deliberate in-universe waste of time at worst.
• Mystery cooking recipes: I think I had the same complaint about River City Girls 1; if all the results are a question mark, who's gonna waste their limited resources gambling on whatever result they're getting?

Story is about what you expect from this genre of cynical post-apocalypic, but the lighthouse mission's ending could reasonably be called the best part of the game with My Destiny playing over the final scene of it. I think my main critique is how the end of the game shifts over to the bond between Laika and her daughter Puppy; it doesn't feel like the rest of the game built up enough on it to connect to their family legacy since Puppy only has the same generic lines on the radio and at home instead of more ways to interact (aside from finding gifts for the gift collection). Could've had her give more sidequests or a bigger role in the story to give her more presence.

The soundtrack is quite nice though.

Rabbit and Steel

Roguelike with Co-op and MMO raid mechanics/ability cooldown rotations/bullet hell. Got the cutscenes for the wolves and the dragons, working on solo hard difficulty for all the class types, got wins with Dancer, Defender, and Bruiser. It is very much a skill game that demands pattern recognition to know the safe spots; the only loot opportunities are the beginning stage which gives 2 treasure chests, and the stages afterwards which have a shop at the beginning for ability upgrades and 1 treasure chest just before the boss. I'm having the easiest time with the wolves, but the mice and frogs are rough with their mechanics.

Still playing Dave the Diver, still love it.

Also still very casually playing Trackmania with aim for the silver medals on all track of the days. Unfortunately some maps are created before physics change and with my level of skills I have to just skip them..

Also playing on Android incremental/idle IdleTale from itch.io (looks like dev managed to publish game on Google Play, but for me itch.io is fine). Game in some ways similar with Idle Slayer, but more player friendly, no ads, no in app purchases, and I love it.

I've been really enjoying the early access of Lockdown Protocol after getting it gifted. I mostly missed the train on Among Us (my fault, was just tired of kids and people pesking me to play it), so it's been nice to hop into another social deduction early on and help others learn the game.

If you take a look at it and debate with yourself on whether or not to get it, here's a detail I've liked about it: Everyone can work on any task. And it's not just going up to panels and pressing x; the tasks are involved and require multiple steps to complete with some type of teamwork typically needed to finish them on time. This means that there are plenty of opportunities for dissidents (imposters) to sneak into the activities and say... walk away with an essential item and tuck it away somewhere. Or simply pretend to be slightly incompetent.

I've found that the balancing is really fine-tuned, and a lot of the games I've played have ended in buzzer-beaters with the last remaining employee throwing analysis items around with seconds to spare. Once I got all the task mechanics down, it easily became my favorite social deduction game in recent memory.

I got gifted Danganronpa 1, 2 and V3 recently, so I'm trying to go through those. Only finished the first one so far and just started the second one. Some of the characters are extremely eccentric so the series probably isn't for everybody, and I can't help but think the games would work much better purely as visual novels because the class trials can get really annoying, and I've been told by one of my friends that they get even more annoying the further into the game you get. I want to see how the stories end so I'm going to power through them anyways.

Satisfactory 1.0 has me firmly in its grip, with no signs of letting go anytime soon. I go to bed late every night, and have nightmares about inefficient production lines.

But it's so satisfying to finish a milestone and watch my factory from a lookout point. Also, I wish I could replace the stairs in my house with hyper tubes.

After 100 or so hours my journey in Elden Ring is nearing its end. It took several respecs, strategy alterations, emotional therapy, and sheer dumb luck, but I have finally taken down Consort Radahn and completed the expansion. It was easily the biggest challenge I've faced yet, standing alongside Malenia and Margit on the tippy top of the difficulty tower, however, unlike those other two, this one was just pure cheese and frustration with no real sense of progress (or 'gitting gud', to use Souls-parlance). Nevertheless, the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion itself has been wonderful, particularly from an exploration point-of-view which has been my favourite part of the overall game.

Next on the agenda hitlist is Maliketh, then onwards to final victory.
...hopefully.