16
votes
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.
Anyone playing Metaphor: ReFantazio ? I'm an hour or two into the demo/prologue, and the world's really drawing me in, which is very rare for me with a JRPG. The bosses* looks amazing.
*) I've only seen one, but screenshots show others are... similar.
Yeah I'm playing it. I'm about 4-5 hours in. I like it a lot, the characters are great, the political intrigue draws me in, and they aren't afraid to do some big stuff with characters.
I haven't played a Persona game, but this whole days/calendar thing scares me a bit. I have a certain number of days to do something... but how do I know if I'm "wasting" a day? I guess I'm used to a little more direction but I see advice like "only do a dungeon once!" I did a big chunk of the catacombs but had to leave because I was on fumes.
I like the game, just worried about getting myself into a bad position.
Don't worry about the advice of "only spend one day of a deadline dungeon crawling," that's just for people who like to max out the social side of the game. If it's your first Atlus game, and even your first Persona game, just take it at your own pace and go do activities that interest you. It isn't necessary to max every bond.
I finished the first dungeon and then some, haven't had time to keep going yet though! If you like Persona 3-5 you'd probably really enjoy it.
It's surprisingly refreshing how blatant the game is about dealing with the themes of racism so far, and I really feel like the combat system is more difficult that just "hit the weakness and go again till you all out attack" kinda deal. It's more interesting, the lore is interesting, and I really enjoy the game a lot so far!
Just started it last night and I was already sold at the idea of Persona DnD. Always enjoyed Atlus games style of narrative and social commentary and the fantasy world is just the right balance of Japanese and Western influence.
Don't think I've found any character or creature particularly unlikeable. Only complaint I'd have is the main character design. Love his voice and dialogue and wouldnt even care if this was all in first person. but I cant look at them and not see a middle school hall monitor. My hope is there's a lot of time skips and we watch them grow up.
Still plugging away at Disco Elysium. Finally found my badge and am now currently hunting for the elusive cryptids along the dreary coastline. I tried to open a door and failed but I'm having trouble accepting that. Another mistake was made, a big one, I called her. I should not have. I called her again... I really should not have.
This game makes me sad, but it also makes me laugh... Sometimes it makes me think about things I'd rather forget.
Thought gained: Repressing Depression
Some doors will forever remain closed.
Amazing game. I wish I could erase my memory and play it again.
Halls of Torment!
It's pretty much a Vampire Survivors game but with Diablo graphics and quests.
It's very fun. I played it maybe ~15 hours and it feels like there is so much more to do. The achievements system is fun because it kinda forces you to play runs a certain way, it's not always just do X damage in X runs or stuff like that.
I've also finished Golden Sun lately and have started playing GS 2 with the sharing code. These games are so interesting, the Djinn combat mechanics is yet to be replicated imo.
It's the first time I replay these games and they still feel so fresh even 20 years later. It's awesome how much charm the devs were able to put into a handheld game.
Oooo, Halls of Torment looks like it might be right up my alley! I may have to look into getting that...
I played the Rivals of Aether 2 semi-open playtest and really enjoyed it, prompting me to get back into Rivals 1. I actually feel a bit more at home in Rivals 2 than 1 because I've always struggled a bit with the lack of shields in the first game but I did notice that I was playing with more intentionality than in my last Rivals phase, which is pleasant. And of course, the workshop modding scene has produced a ton more awesome characters since I last looked at it, especially since they had a contest. Splendid experience!
Also been playing Slay the Spire! Fuck Time Eater.
Mostly old stuff.
I'm still making my way through a heavily modded playthrough of Knights of the Old Republic II, which I've never played before. I still think it's super neat that I can play the modded version on Android, so I'm still spending most of my time there. I do almost wonder if I've "Soft Locked" myself, as I went to Korriban first when the "world" opened-up and I'm finding lots of Sith Assassins who are absolutely kicking my ass. I'm trying to go a different route than I have been and so far there only seem to be easier enemies, so I'm hoping I get a few levels here and there and then can get myself out of this predicament.
I've also been playing a good amount of Peglin and I'm loving it. So far, I've managed to complete two full runs in the about 8-hours I've been playing and it's been great. It honestly gets my thoughts brewing on the current zeitgeist of complaining about "RNG", which is something I actually like in my games, though not to the detriment of everything else. I find there's plenty of grousing about it in Peglin, but so far of the 8-hours I've played, yes it exists, but it can be mitigated. I think it hits the right notes of having just enough RNG to think about, meaning you can kind of try to build around it and mitigate it to some extent, but it doesn't wholly drive the game as it does in many others. You can make some informed decisions and turn things in your favor if you're clever about it.
I've also been splitting some time between Diablo and Diablo II: Resurrected; trying to decide which game I enjoy more. I've just reached Act 2 in Diablo 2 and while I do enjoy it, I think I actually prefer Diablo over the second game, as it feels much more tense and more of a "Survival Horror" experience than the second game, which mostly feels like a monster bash. I really enjoy the atmosphere, limited itemization and careful planning that's going in to my current Diablo run; although, realistically, I'll probably continue to play both games until I feel that one is really grabbing me more than the other and I begin favoring it.
You know, I kinda agree with the Diablo sentiment. D2 is an awesome game, but as a single player, it's just so easy to rush through the game and cool moments just seem to go by so quickly.
D1 is a just tense game, man. Every time you go back to the dungeons, it feels scary! You never really know if you'll make it back up.
It's really why ARPGs never really grab me and I've tried dozens; I want to love them, but I'm not interested in creating builds and I find just smashing through hordes of monsters not all that interesting. Nothing really has that feeling like the original and I'm only finally beginning to understand why.
Thanks for your thoughts on Peglin! It's been on my wishlist for a while, so that might be the next thing I pick up whenever I'm in a roguelike mood again!
Finally started playing Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor. Damn this game is awesome. Basically a mashup of Arkham games and Assassin's Creed but a LOTR game.
Not super far into it so far, I have heard a lot about the "Nemesis" system and how people love it and hate that they patented it so no one else can use it. Still too early to really grasp how it works but I like the idea of working my way through the roster of captains and killing them all to eventually get to the big bad commander.
I'm surprised no one has tried to do something similar but distinct enough to not be the same system.
I would love more games where I can kill my way through the enemies ranks to eventually take down the big boss at the end.
IIRC the nemesis system is less about there being ranks of enemies and more about persistent enemies that take on new lives after they kill you. So if you kill a bunch of orcs, they just fade into obscurity, but when you die, the one that killed you gets a promotion and suddenly you start seeing him more. He then might even have other orcs as minions following him around because of all the prestige he got from killing you. And then the next time you encounter him he'll say something relevant like "oh so you've come back for more..." or "I'll kill you again".
So I would assume it's super difficult to come up with a system that replicates that persistent enemy development and rapport without infringing upon the Nemesis system, which is why people hate the patent.
Yeah and it's even more upsetting because they haven't done anything with it since. Obviously Shadow of War, but I mean that's it. It's so dumb.
Why do that if you aren't going to even use it?
Agreed. Imagine if indie developers were able to use the Nemesis system for something like roguelikes, where repeated death is the whole point of the game. Could make for some even-better games.
I played Teslagrad 2, a gift from @culturedleftfoot . It's kinda like... Teslagrad!
I played the first game back in the day (I've since received the remastered version as a gift from @kfwyre ) and remember enjoying it quite a bit. It's a "metroidvania" (really more of a puzzle platformer) with a unique charisma, captivating aesthetic, and some fairly difficult, tightly timed platforming sequences (rewarding, though, even if you have to die or retry a lot).
The second game mostly retains the qualities of the first. It takes place in an obvious fjord, one single massive sidescrolling level where our protagonist (a girl this time) is running away from... vikings in flying, oil fueled drakkars? There's a lot of visual storytelling (no words) through character gestures, unique art and a whole bunch of collectible cards, which are the main incentive for exploration (the main progression is fairly linear). The soundtrack is gorgeous. Much as in the first game, the protagonist's abilities are thematically based on electricity and magnetism. I played through 100% of the game, collecting every card and achievement, except only for a post-final-boss secret fight I found poorly designed (and it's my long standing policy not to waste time on frustrating combat that gates literally nothing behind it!) It took me just over 9 hours.
There were a few issues; the occasional glitch made me clip through the floor or a wall, but nothing serious. For most of the game I found the map infuriatingly useless; it shows only where the "walls" are, a bit like in Aquaria, but it does so very unreliably, occasionally showing hallways where there's an obstacle or failing to show "hidden" tunnels. It's sometimes difficult to know where to go next, and there is no real "fast" (as in instant) travel, merely shortcuts. If you want to go somewhere, you need to actually travel there, and the map is very vertical, meaning a single mistake can result in falling a looong way down and having to cross a whole area again from the start. The map does redeem itself in the endgame, and eventually I began to appreciate the fun there was to be had with the lack of handholding. The only thing I looked up was how exactly they expected me to fight a couple of the bosses, since this wasn't demonstrated well.
Progression felt a bit off. Since it's largely linear, and you know the location of the next boss, the game makes it very easy to go from boss to boss and make it to the "final boss" and the end of the game. You really need to make an effort to go out of your way if you want to get all the cards, extra areas and secrets. Even weirder, though, is that a good half of the protagonist's abilities are only granted as part of this optional exploration, making them effectively optional and, in a couple of cases, largely useless. It would have been more fun if they were more incorporated in the game, with more things to do with them.
Also, either I got a lot better at platforming in the last ten years (which maybe I did?) or this game is considerably easier than the first! There are still challenges and you will still die, but gone are the long, unforgiving platforming sequences; in fact the checkpointing is very generous. Almost as if the designers were afraid to turn people off!
Sands of Aura was one of those rare misses for me. I gave it a solid single session try before deciding it wasn't the game for me (so keep that in mind while reading the following paragraphs - maybe the game becomes amazing later on). It's a third person action RPG in the vein of Diablo or Torchlight. It looks good, but it has some very questionable design decisions.
The first thing that stands out is the lack of a dynamic map. I'd never played a game like this without any kind of map or minimap (except for a static and very abstract world map). I found it interesting at first, but you do need a sense of direction. There were other interesting mechanics kind of like what you might see in other games in the genre, such as the ability to bind spells to actions in order to confer elemental abilities to them, or the ability to slot runes into equipment.
Default button bindings were kind of weird. The main attack button is in the stiff, hard to press first right shoulder button ("RB" or equivalent). Jumping is on the left button of the right hand diamond rather than the bottom button as in every other game in existence. Your jump is tiny and you do need to use it to clear gaps. If you miss, you will fall to your death and respawn at the last "bell" you rested in. Instantaneous single-mistake deaths that introduces a potentially long, annoying amount of retracing your steps is really not what I want from a game in 2024. At one point I tried to carefully hop down a small ledge in town and my character cheerfully launched herself over the stairs I was trying to descend into and dashed her body into the rocks far below.
Worst of all, though, was the combat. I think the game wants to be a soulslike, but it doesn't accomplish that very well. Motions (unimproved) are heavy and ponderous, forcing you to try to time your dodges and counterattacks, which works if you have one, perhaps two enemies present; the game soon starts throwing three and four at you at a time. You can stagger enemies, which is useful for five minutes before the game starts throwing un-staggerable enemies at you. Your parry is unreliable, and your dodge roll is even worse. This is one of those games in which if you try to dodge an archer's arrow with the dodge roll, the archer will just turn faster to keep you targeted. You can't really dodge through enemies and you don't seem to get i-frames to speak of. Enemies are tanky; even the weakest monsters require multiple hits to take down, which adds to the slowness of combat. On the other hand, monsters in the early game will hit you hard enough that you can be dispatched very quickly, forcing you to burn through your limited amount of heals.
When you die, you drop all your money. You can recover it, of course, if you go back to the monsters that killed you and
ask politelytry again and hope for better RNG. Or you could improve your chances by going and upgrading your equipment using the money that you- oh, wait. I guess go grind some money from weaker monsters first? I'm really not interested in playing a game in which I need to grind, though. And the story felt kind of generic.Previous
The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past:
First time I played it was on the Game Boy Advance and I decided to play the original SNES version on Nintendo Switch Online. Not sure if I enjoy the experience.
Something feels off about the controls. Maybe it's the input latency with Nintendo's shoddy emulation solution, or it's the fact that the control mapping is shit on the original game, i.e. needing to hit X instead of a more logical button like Start or Select to open the map, or how the Pegasus Boots are activated with the same button you use to lift objects.
I'm past the first Aghanim fight (got fucked by really bad lightning orb RNG and just about survived with half a heart remaining) and in the Dark World now where everything is kicking my ass. Enemies go up to doing drastic amounts of damage in this part of the game and I've suffered my first few deaths just trying to get to the first DW dungeon.
Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster:
First of all, may I commend Square Enix on what a dismal job they've done with the PC port of this?
Aside from initially opening in 1024x768 windowed mode and not recognizing my gamepad, I open the (out of game) settings menu only to have the entire thing in Japanese by default. It's a good thing that I had the intuition to recognize which drop down menu was the language selection.
That's not the end of my woes either. By the time I got through the Besaid Cloister of Trials, the pre-rendered FMV cutscenes that followed literally green screened on me with only the cutscene audio, subtitles and pause menu working.
Some sources say it's a problem with 64-bit operating systems running the game (it's a fucking 2016 port of a 2013 remaster that really shouldn't be suffering from these problems), others say it's fixed by checking a tickbox in the Nvidia control panel. I went with the latter solution because no way am I trusting a random "patch" linked on a Steam discussion forum thread by a rando.
And I thought the Switch version with it's dismal loading times where sometimes I've been stuck for nearly a minute waiting for a random encounter to start was bad...
NGU Idle:
Finally past The Exile v3 and farming the Rad Lands. This is the last home stretch before I can finally move on to Sadistic difficulty.
As much as I love the humour of this game, 4G has made a horrific time sink of an idle game that would take years to finish.
Hmm, I didn't have this problem so maybe it is unique for someone who hasn't played it before?
So with metaphor coming out and some friends of mine thinking about their gaming setup, I was longing for the time when I was playing more story driven games on the tv in my living room with my wife and sometimes my daughter as a live commentating audience. I fired up my ps4 but it sounded like a jet engine firing up. (I don’t really know what that sounds like but I imagine it’s loud) anyway: I set my fears aside, googled and YouTubed the hell out of the PlayStation cleaning wormhole, and tore my ps4 apart ^^. Booting it back up after was really exciting, more so because it was whisper quiet!
So I bought myself a few months in the ps5-purchasing process and I’m now enjoying the last of us (part 1) which is included in the ps membership. I’m a bit tightly wound, so my threshold is probably a little low, but man that game is tense! When I’m alone in the room I just press pause until someone is sitting next to me to continue playing. The story hits me hard, and I felt myself thinking about it during the day, so I imagine this will become quite the ride.
On my steam deck I’m still enjoying the occasional plate-up run (last week I got some amazing advice on tildes to do a cookie/cake run, which helped us reach overtime day 5, that was awesome), and nobody saves the world and ufo50 when I want to play something solo.
Nobody saves the world is a remarkable game. I love unlocking new characters and going back to old dungeons to level m up and build confidence in the combat system of the game. The fact that when you unlock a new skill with a character you can then apply that skill to other characters as well is such a joy to tinker with. I’m always progressing on something!
And then last week in Paris I started a new pentiment run. for the third time. There is something about that game that makes me come back, even though I burn out of it kind of quickly. I love the story, but progressing it just feels so slow. And I mean the literal moving around of it all. Andreas walks slow. The ‘flip a page’ animation in the menu feel slow. Combine that (perceived) slowness with my need to talk to most npcs before progressing to a different storybeat as not to miss anything, and it just gets too tedious. But the story… I like that story. I like the characters. So here I am, back again. :)
Enjoy and savor TLOU! TLOU and TLOU2 are two of my favorite games! The story in both absolutely murdered my emotions.
The new season for Destiny 2 came out, Revenant! The season's theme is fighting the undead, kind of a fun theme compared to the usual and it ties right in with halloween! The act 1 story content wasn't that long, but with a new dungeon, ritual weapon and armor refreshes, the halloween event coming up, iron banner and trials armor and weapon refreshes, etc., I'll probably be kept busy for most of the season!
The new dungeon, Vesper's Host is excellent, IMO. Dungeons and Raids are my favorite part of the game, so I'm pretty happy that Vesper is fun, has good looking armor, and has good weapons! I'll be running it at least a couple dozen times to get everything, probably.
Besides that, just still patiently waiting for Black Ops 6. It seems like it's been an eternity since the beta and I need to play more of it!
Very recently finished The Last of Us Part 2, one hell of an emotional rollercoaster!
Having had time to process it:
The backlash it got at the time was massively overblown. I actually liked the split narrative approach, and how it gave a different perspective on events
Since the October Humble Choice games have been out I've been playing Station to Station, loving the cozy vibe as I work out the best way to connect locations.
TLOU2 Full Game Spoilers
I agree with you on TLOU2. IMO the game is much more impactful when you have to play as Abby and see the world through her eyes rather than if you *only* played as Ellie on a revenge tour. Ellie's story is great in the game, too, but what makes the game one of the GOATs to me is that instead of just hunting down the bad guy like in 90% of games, you have to see the world from Abby's point of view and see that she's also dealing with some fucked up shit and even though Abby did a horrible thing in killing Joel, you can absolutely see how he sort of deserved it in her eyes at least. The split narrative also gives you a chance to see that Abby does genuinely care about the people she knows, she isn't just some mindless monster like many game villains.Between both games, I think it's one of the best stories in gaming and the capital G Gamer backlash about it really disappointed me. There are a ton of factors that go into what caused that whole thing, but it really does seem like it was just a bunch of emotionally underdeveloped people not being able to comprehend their feelings about Joel's death, so they just projected hatred about the game instead of realizing and accepting that it's okay to have a story make you feel negative emotions sometimes. Personally, I love the way the game makes me feel. Emotions like sadness, anger, and lost are just as much a part of the human experience as anything else and I appreciate a game that can make me feel so strongly about its characters and story.
Very much agreed. After completing it I also watched the second grounded making of documentary on youtube. That reminded me of something I'd forgotten about but I think also played a big factor in the backlash. The Leaks that happened between covid postponement and release, showing a lot of the big narrative moments in the game out of sequence/context.
Link to it in case anyone wants to watch that hasn't already seen it.
I got some pretty severe RPG burnout from Baldurs Gate 3 and Starfield, so pivoted to Timberborn. The new "badwater" mechanic is a fun twist, another resource to manage, but not terrible on "normal." I decided to try a 50x50 map and the colony just died right now, thought I had my farming on point but the harvest/drought cycles were just phased wrong and killed them. It was a fun little run though.
20 Minutes til Dawn: This game is basically "Vampire Survivors, but what if you actually shot used the weapons?" That's the inspiration. It's also sort of #2 in the birth/resurgence of this genre, and is a blast to play, but quite hard. I'm trying to find a good build to beat the Temple with and am fixed on Dasher, a sword, and elemental/heal builds.
Yeah, I totally feel this. I've noticed I have less, I don't know, "endurance?" for big role-playing games now than I did when I was younger. Like I can't just play Fallout almost every single day until I finish the game, like I used to.
In fact, the last big RPG I completed in a single "unbroken" playthrough, meaning I didn't take a break for a few weeks or months (or years) and start playing other games, was Cyberpunk 2077 back when it released. Even then, that was a real feat for me. Am I just getting old? Is this, and joint pain, what happens when you get old?
It has been eight months since I stopped my last playthrough of Fallout 4, and four months since I got a few hours into Act 2 of Baldur's Gate 3 and called it quits, and hm, I should probably check on my settlement in No Man's Sky.
But, you know, I just started a new playthrough of (modded) Starsector this weekend, so I'll get back to those other games some other time.
Aside from endurance, I'd also describe it as "tolerance" in the vein of drugs like caffeine. I need more novel experiences and faster feedback loops where grinding out quests or going through a gameplay-cutscene-gameplay level won't give me a fix anymore. I fall off story-heavy games after 30-40 hours and essentially go on autopilot until I finish it. I could keep plot contexts for a few weeks in my head before they get overwritten by other things I need to do in life, and that's after outsourcing my life and my brain to a to-do list with GTD.
One factor I could think of is repetitive side quest design and open world traversal where essentially nothing is happening and you just push forward to get to the next plot trigger as padding. It's just easy and routine enough that the mind starts to wander instead of remaining fully engaged in the world and story.
And speaking of feedback loops, I've also gravitated back to gameplay-heavy sandboxes with a lot of interacting systems which tend to satisfy this loop faster. I've done a few Bannerlord playthroughs and currently on X4: Foundations (once I make sense of the impenetrable UI, which is where Starsector shines even if it doesn't have the level of galactic simulation that the X series has)
Padding really gets to me. I jumped back into Cyberpunk yesterday after dropping it for quite some time and I just feel that that game would benefit from being just a linear experience. When I have to figure out where to go next or what to do, my brain just begins to wander and think about other stuff.
It isn't the open world, as I'm happy to play Breath of the Wild and just push on and go exploring, but Cyberpunk just has this pretty empty, dead feeling world. The story bits are fun and interesting, but getting to them just ends-up feeling pretty tedious, causing me to become distracted and then feel less invested and wanting to move to some other game or task.
Though similarly, I grow rapidly bored with stuff like RDR2 right now, but I have been playing KOTOR 2; maybe that's just because it's so much more condensed than other games.
I also liked 20 minutes until dawn, but then I found it was a little unbalanced (unsure if its been patched out, I should try it again!) But there was essentially an almost certain to drop combo with one of the characters which made every run a total breeze.
I'll need to check it out again.
After a decade of thinking about it, I finally decided to create a permanent 'every system I want' emulation set. I bought a 8 terrabyte drive (Honestly, may not be large enough. I have half of it filled and still haven't added any PS3 or Switch games), installed emudeck, and have started the collection. So far I've decided on the following consoles:
NES
SNES
N64
Gamecube
Wii
Wii U
Switch
Master System
Genesis
Saturn
Dreamcast
PS1
PS2
PS3
PSP
Gameboy
Gameboy Color
GBA
DS
3DS
Xbox
Gamegear
And then probably DOS, Arcade/Mame, Apple II, C64, Neo Geo, Wonderswan, PCEngine, Atari Jaguar. I'm skipping consoles prior to the NES, as I find that frequently their visuals and gameplay are usually not to my liking. Obviously not a limitation of storage, just the time in finding and curating the games I am interested in.
Currently going through one console at a time and downloading all the games I have heard good things about (or bad, in say something like Shaq Fu). Then I go through lists of 'top 100' games for each and fill out what I missed.
I never had a PS2, so I am playing God of War. I am not very far in, but this game is incredibly cinematic for the time and is STILL really impressive. The transition shots are super smooth and often beautiful.
I JUST (last night) playing Persona 3 for the PS2. I have never played a Persona game (In fact I don't play many JRPGs in general). Does anyone have any suggestions for what Persona games to play? I started with 3 because IIRC that is what was discussed most on Giantbomb back in the day.
Welcome to any 'hidden gem' suggestions for any of your favorite games. My go to example is Zone of the Enders for the GBA. I great little RPG that isn't super recognized and is overshadowed by it's home console brothers.
I finished up Arkham Knight this weekend and despite the game's insistence on using the batmobile, I really enjoyed it. It's probably my second favorite of the series, behind Arkham Aslyum (I'm really not a huge fan of open world environments and prefer smaller settings/metroidvania style maps).
Mark Hamill absolutely kills it as Joker, like always, and I know some people didn't like the whole "Joker blood" thing, but I liked how it manifested in the story.
Some criticisms:
For like the 3rd straight game, the amount of Riddler content is exhausting. I made up my mind to not bother with the trophies early on, but finding out the "true" ending is locked behind finding all 200+ Riddler puzzles is really frustrating.
Batman sidelining Robin for just about the whole game felt really contrived.
I guessed the "twist" of Arkham Knight's identity about 30 minutes into the game. It seemed really obvious to me, and I'm not what I would consider a huge Batman lore person. (I basically know the characters from the Burton Batman movies and the Nolan Batman movies, and the characters who have popped up in the other Arkham games.) This wouldn't be such a big deal if it didn't take Batman himself the entirety of the game to surmise. I understand Batman thinks this character is dead, but he never saw a body, so...
I've just been playing Astro Bot this week on my PS5. I don't game at all much these days, just in a bit of a slump, but Astro Bot has been great. Absolutely loving the soundtrack and the gameplay really does feel like a Nintendo platformer rather than something Sony would put out. It's definitely a welcome surprise and I hope Sony and more specifically Team ASOBI can put out more games like this.
Since these threads aren't just about video games, I'll mention a card game as well. My friends and I have been playing poker for the last month or two. We try to keep it low stakes, like $5-10/person, just so that everyone can have fun and play a few hands. While the game is cool, the real fun for me is just being able to hang out with friends IRL. While we have played poker virtually, gathering around a table at one of our houses and just chit-chatting while playing for a few hours has been great.
Play Balatro.
I've been playing a mod for Diablo 2, called D2R Reimagined. Thus far I've really enjoyed it. You can see some of what's in it here.
In D2 I finally got to the very end with my barbarian, Grognak. I did an off-the-cuff build, Frenzy and Double Swing with gear spec'd for attack speed, life drain, and crushing blow/open wounds/deadly strike. Took a good while, and it was def clear as I went along that while the build does work, without some pretty serious luck it would have taken a lot longer. Getting through Hell was not easy. I'd make it a few levels, then have to stop and go find better stuff. I kept hitting what felt like walls, enemies/groupings i just could not cope with until I went grinding for a while and did some runewords.
With reimagined, I decided to try the same build again ("Grognakson"). It's like the whole experience got flipped around. Where before I would work my way up to a difficult point, then regroup to get better gear/build stuff out, now I've got enough options that I can be proactive and prepare for what I know is ahead. It makes for an overall smoother experience, with a lot more freedom to explore what different stuff does and take bigger risks when crafting/upgrading/etc. The mod does a good job of taking some mechanics from later ARPG's and translating them to something suited to the sort of challenge D2 sought to offer. You can find items that upgrade the quality of different gear pieces, but they're very, very rare. You can use your gems to continuously upgrade but each time you do it, it increases the level requirement to equip. There's always a bit of a trade-off that I feel makes the whole thing cohesive/sensible, rather than just implementing things that could throw the balance off. The massive number of new uniques/sets means you do find more of those, but it's not nearly the sort of pinata experience D3 was - the legendary stuff is still, mostly really good, and because there's a lot more in the running you're less likely to come across the same stuff over and over again. For melee in particular, there are new charms that give you abilities like splash damage/multi-hits, at the cost of some of your overall damage output.
I've really enjoyed my time with it. I just got to Hell again, and it's been enough of a smoother ride that i'm gonna try to do the Uber bosses this time around. I've been starting games with the other classes too and thus far have similarly positive impressions. As much as I enjoy the original game, the changes the mod makes are so nice that I don't think I'll be going back to it any time soon.
Started playing Halo 2 again after talking about it on Tildes made me crave a campaign replay. Apparently I hadn't played since June of 2023 so I was due. It's funny how the pacing is near perfect until you end up back in the library and it gets bogged down just like it did in the first Halo. That said, the Scorpion tank never gets old.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/11450/Overlord/
Silly stupid game, but 1 and 2 let your minions rip apart a room looking for treasure. All while whispering "Thank you master"
Diceomancer released last week after being initially showcased at a Steam Next Fest a few months ago and it's yet another fun variation on the classic deckbuilder game. The gimmick in this one is a magical die that lets you manipulate any number on the screen, from health bars to card values to your current mana pool to even the values of buffs and debuffs in the compendium itself. There's your usual spread of mana types, null, purple, red, blue, green, black, and cards to go along with them. You can't choose cards to start a game with, but you do choose 3 color orbs to determine your class, which has its own innate perk and gives you a set of starting cards of matching color.
Beating the game itself isn't hard, though like every good deckbuilder you're encouraged to try out every possible combination of colors to beat it over and over, and you earn coins to unlock new cards, relics, color orbs, opportunities to use your number-altering die, etc. And there will absolutely be plenty of opportunities to use it, though it does consume some charges each time you do which recharge as you progress, so you can't just set your enemies' health bars to a value between 1-6 in every encounter. Also, the game has this cute hand-drawn cartoon art style and quite a few cards which reference other games and media, which are just extra treats on top of a very replayable game.
I started a co-op game of the new Kingdoms Two Crowns expansion and it while it is mostly a reskin of the original it does have a lot of little things that improve the game like smarter unit positioning and some new toys like boats that help with portal assaults. It's also got a few new amusing mounts and it comes with a pretty big campaign over a dozen or so islands that should keep us busy for awhile. So far it's been a really good addition and I think anyone who liked the original will like this too.