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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.
Since it released I've been playing STALKER 2. The original game, Shadow of Chernobyl, was probably one of the most important pieces of media I've ever encountered, and the sequel has allowed me to relive an experience that meant a ton to me.
Back in 2007, I was gifted a laptop. Prior to that, I hadn't done much PC gaming besides Doom, Quake, and Baldur's Gate, because what I had was an eight year old desktop. I didn't know anything about system requirements, PC hardware, etc (I grew up mostly with portables). If I remember right, the laptop was an Inspiron with some sort of integrated ATI chip in it. Since the computer was new I figured, hey cool, I'll go get a few of those games I was interested in. At the store, I picked up Morrowind, Neverwinter Nights, Doom 3, and then I saw the box for Shadow of Chernobyl. Something about it was just too intriguing. Nothing else looked like that, a shooter that was clearly also trying to do horror in a bit of a deeper way than other stuff I'd played. I grabbed it, got home, installed it, and while i was blown away by how it looked, it did not run very well at all. The game had a dx8 mode that ran a lot better, but you lost out on all the cool lighting effects. I couldn't return the game, so instead I decided I would figure out whatever I needed to figure out to make that game work, because I just couldn't live without seeing a game with such cool lighting and weird stuff in it.
I spent many, many hours, upgrading what I could in my computer, learning about Windows so I could trim it into being as efficient as possible, and learned what every graphics option did in the game. I even did something I barely remember to mess with my graphics drivers to squeeze like 2 more frames. I learned that patches were a thing, and that mods were also a thing. Over time, it meant I learned a ton about the machine, to the point I kinda crash coursed myself into being able to do basic tech support. After tweaking just about every single thing I could, I played that game to the end in dx9 mode, at 24 fps, 1024x768, four times, on a trackpad. That's how much I adored it lol. As I was going through college, I introduced my friends to the game and we all got way into it, following the later releases and upgrading our hardware to keep up. It was an awesome experience, and years later the work of learning about the computer positioned me to get jobs doing technical support.
STALKER 2 has been like reliving that first year. The game is kinda finnicky, and there's a ton of stuff you can change. My hardware is much better (3070ti + 5900HX), so instead of fumbling with it to get it to work, it's been more about getting a clearer image and nicer effects. This time around, the modding community is just pumping out new stuff too, so I learned a bit about how you can tweak UE5 and figured out a bunch of stuff that got me where I wanted to be with it. I tried running the game on my steam deck, knowing it probably wouldn't work, and almost exactly like 2007, it worked just enough that I felt maybe I could make it perform, and spent much time trying all sorts of things (I think I was mostly successful, and have been playing on both devices for a while now).
Outside the technical end, the game itself delivers in some ways I just find phenomenal. The Zone has changed, but it's still the same place. What you did in the original games about ten years ago had consequences, and you're jumping in after all of that. It's amazing the extent to which the developers tried to bring together just about everything those games had, from the remade locations, to the music, to the way the factions have changed. Old characters return, having lived through a bunch of stuff we didn't see, and it gives the place a sense of history that I just don't get from a lot of other franchises. It feels like the Zone was there the whole time, just going along, doing Zone things, and I came back after being gone for about ten years.
The remade locations are super cool to return to. The way they've been redesigned, they communicate how people moved around and repurposed different spots as different situations unfolded. The characters talk about how the Zone has changed, and a bit about how the events of the prior games affected it. There's tons of little easter eggs, spots and stuff to find that show the developers really, really cared about the sense of place and time. While the gameplay sometimes does some funky stuff, that too is kinda part of the whole relived experience for me - I played Shadow of Chernobyl unpatched for a long time, folks don't know the horror lol. The longer I spend in it the more I come to think of the sequel's name, "Heart of Chornobyl" as having a bit of a dual meaning. There's clearly some in-game stuff that makes that make sense, but too I think it's that the sequel is a heartfelt attempt at really taking us back to something folks loved.
I'm super excited for the future too. Despite the bugginess, there's been folks rooting through files and figuring out what all is there, and it looks pretty promising to me. If the devs come through with mod tools, I think we'll see some unbelievably good stuff out of the modding community. The developers are, best I can tell, dedicated to improving it and listening to what folks have to say, it doesn't strike me at all like a product meant to just capitalize on nostalgia. It's like all the magic of a 2000's Bethesda title, a beautiful place to explore with all kinds of new things happening you can add to it. Really amazing way to cap off the year for me, the game releasing at all is pretty much a miracle and what's in it is really something special.
Edit: Just for the sake of it, here's two albums: Laptop and Steam Deck. My goal with the deck was to first get it to perform acceptably and then get back as much of the intended look as I could. It's in a state where, if I told you everything I did you'd be deeply skeptical, but if I just handed the thing to you you'd be pretty surprised/impressed. I also tried playing through Remote Play - I'd say it's about equal to native with respect to latency, like using a good bluetooth controller. Seeing the game on higher settings though on the OLED's screen is something else, it's astounding how good that looks.
I'm curious if you know why they spelled it 'Chornobyl' in the title. Is there a plot reason? Rights issue? Is 'Chornobyl' the transliteration for the Ukrainian name of the plant as opposed to the Russian 'Chernobyl'?
Maybe I'm just a weirdo, but my brain won't stop worrying this bone, and I haven't seen anyone even remark on the change in passing.
You got it, it's the Ukrainian way of spelling it, and the first game had the Russian way of spelling it. The plot doesn't talk about it, it just rolls with that spelling as though it was always the case. They did make a few changes to drive home its origin as a Ukrainian game, without directly commenting on the war as far as I can tell.
From what I can tell, there's been a gradual shift in tone regarding the Russian language and Russian characters over the course of the series--or perhaps I should say the course of the genre. It's clearly outgrown its origin as an adaptation of Roadside Picnic to become its own thing, and the inclusion of the Chornobyl/Chernobyl incident into the metageneric mythos has made the concept a prime artistic vehicle to explore cultural and political tensions between post-Soviet Ukraine and Russia.
I should say that I've never played a single game in the series or the genre, nor have I watched any film or TV adaptations of Roadside Picnic. Everything I know about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and the other related media comes from critical analysis, largely by Youtubers. I find it difficult to reach flow state in military shooters as a general rule, and never got into the Counterstrike, Arma, CoD, or Battlefield games, which all seem to be influences on and in dialogue with the series and genre. Effin' Wolfenstein: New Order and Half-Life were both too milsim for my tastes, if that tells you anything.
I do find the concept fascinating, though. It's hard to think of a more apt symbol for Russian imperialism than a nuclear plant that melted down under Russian-dominated Soviet management.
You might like the book! Roadside Picnic is easy to find and doesn't take very long to read, I think I finished it in a couple of afternoons. The Tarkovsky film is also really good, but imo you do need to go into it with a certain mindset/expectations - it's trying to deliver on a sense of place and be contemplative. It's slow moving, has practically no action, it's mostly dudes talking in a kinda allegorical way while they trek through a weird place.
The original games imo sit somewhere near Deus Ex, they're kinda like "immersive sims" with some horror and military flavoring. At least the way I like to play, you're often scouting at range and trying to pick folks off, until they get the jump on you and then it's pretty wild. The mutants are legit pretty scary even when you know about them, because they behave differently and often gang up on you out of nowhere. A lot of your time is spent exploring, foraging, and putting together mini plans for your next outing. The firefights can be really fun, because the AI will do stuff like flank you and work their way around your position, sometimes with stuff like suppressive fire and grenades. There is some milsim/tactical shooter stuff going on, but it's mostly the mods/modpacks that lean heavily into it. The games on their own have more of an emphasis on storytelling/roleplaying.
The games dont directly deal with politics but they do have some interesting connections. There's a faction in the game, Monolith, that at least to me appears to be a stand-in for Russian imperialism - they're a group of cultists, completely hostile, controlled by a singular will that demands they take up as much of the Zone as possible while it presents to them a different picture of reality. The original games involve confronting them and ultimately the source of that singular will, itself the result of Soviet experimentation, and the sequel carries forward the consequences of what happened when you did that in some interesting ways. At least from my perspective it seems loosely allegorical - folks don't talk about the world at large in-game much at all, it's like the Zone is a microcosm of a world of ideologies playing themselves out that mirrors some of what the developers are familiar with. I'm of course absurdly biased but if they seem at all interesting, highly recommend giving them a shot.
Edit: I have a thought on the off-chance anyone more familiar with the country/region is out there/reading these. If the other factions in the game line up with real-world ideological tendencies, it would be interesting to tie that all together in an essay about the game being an allegory. I know about the game, but I don't know much about politics in Ukraine.
Chornobyl is the Ukrainian spelling. There was a move over to it after the Russian government spoiled relations by launching their war on Ukraine.
Warlockracy, a very amusing Ukrainian YouTuber, said that GSC Gameworlds also announced they wouldn't be releasing the sequel in Russian, leading to an online Russian social media and forum incident known as "[Slur presumably aimed at Ukrainians]-gate".
There is in fact a disclaimer on their website that you may be jailed if you play their game from Russia. So they can slur all they want, they won't get to play it anyway. Neither in Russian nor Ukrainian.
As an aside, the Ukrainian voice acting is generally really good and I've been enjoying that over the English VA.
I'm playing Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order right now on my Steam Deck.
I have very mixed fellings about the game. It was recommended to me here on Tildes and I'm glad I bought it and that I'm playing it - I'm finally playing some kinda modern Star Wars game. But if I knew how it would be, I wouldn't buy it again.
Do you ask why? Well, I can't really put a finger (point) on what is bad on it. It just feels mediocre all around. There is combat system which is standard. There is Force usage which is standard. There are characters that leave me cold (I think I'm far enough to say that I should have developed some feelings about them), there is some story which is uninteresting. There are graphics that are nice and worlds/maps that are great and puzzles that are above average.
But the game as a whole seems like generic action (RPG) where you can easily swap Star Wars theme for Harry Potter one and be pretty much ok. Switch Force for Mana, switch lightsaber for sword, switch the spaceship for dragon and you are ok. The game very much lacks the Star Wars vibe for me. It fails to be unique enough for me to consider it Star Wars game. I won't be replaying it and I will be writing negative review on Steam. Or maybe positive, but I'm really not enjoying it that much. I play it for sake of playing it which is not good in my eyes. I will finish it though, I want to.
If you ask what Star Wars game was Star Wars enough for me then I have some examples: Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast, Jedi Academy and KotOR 1&2. Those are games I would all play anytime over this new Fallen Order.
If I wanted to play action RPG I would play Witcher 3 once more. If I wanted to play kinda action adventure, I would play Tomb Raider. I have already said which games I would play if I wanted to play Star Wars game. Fallen Order is not mentioned any single time and it will never be.
Sorry to all who like or love the game, this is just my honest opinion on it.
EDIT: Spelling
I agree that these are all better games than the new Jedi games (though I disagree on the why -- for me it's primarily the souls-like/lite combat that I don't love), but I also think if you made all the substitutions in any of those games that you proposed for Jedi, switching it to the HP world, they would also be fine. I guess I don't understand the purpose of saying, If you change the theme from Star Wars to Harry Potter, you don't have a Star Wars game anymore. That seems pretty true of every IP?
Star Wars in and of itself isn't a terribly original IP, or at least in 2024 there are enough universes that borrow from Star Wars and what Star Wars itself borrowed from that the universe is only a few tweaks away from a different universe. But those parts are in there, so I don't know what you could add (or subtract) that would make it feel more like Star Wars.
This is why I said I can't put a finger on it. I have played some similar action-type games (ie. Wotcher 3) and Falen Order just does nothing for me. I didn't get into it.
What I meant with switching SW for HP was that the game seems just so generic to me. Nothing really original or standing out. It almost seems like it was just some framework that they put SW clothes on.
And it is true that if you put other clothing for (for me well known) Jedi Outcast, it would work too. Well, it's basically Quake/Unreal game to some extent - premade map with corridors where you have to backtrack sometimes to open some.previously locked door. But it just feels like Star Wars movies to me (especially ep. 4-6). There is similar feeling with KotOR 1&2. Part of this is familiarity with worlds and environments that games borrowed from the movies, no doubt. Part of it is that I could get into the story through themain protagonist. Part of it is because the playstyle suited me.
And while I like Tomb Raider for the climbing and looking for paths and collecting some stuff (and Lara) and while I like Witcher 3 for the story and the action gameplay, I feel unable to find similar excitement in Fallen Order.
It is good game in some ways and it is trash in others - for me, that is. You may not like my opinion and I can understand your points, but that won't change my view on this game.
What could be added for it to become more Star Wars? That's the same as pointing out what doesn't make it like that. I really don't know. There is some lack of uniqueness that I fail to describe. As I said, it just seems like generic game framework with Star Wars theme on top for me.
Oh! And another SW gam that I like - LEGO Star Wars. The old and the new one too. Thinking about it, maybe it's all up to the "looks and feels like old movies". Maybe Fallen Order strayed too far from the path and I should call it "Star Wars inspired".
If you enjoy the Star Wars vibe, you may want to try Star Wars Outlaws. Personally, it's the most fun I've had with a Ubisoft game in years, mainly because they nailed the environment/vibe. Note, however, that it doesn't feed into the force power fantasy. The main character is a Han Solo-esque woman who is down on her luck and coerced into putting together a crew to pull off a heist. There are no force powers or light sabers to be seen, but tons of small details that Star Wars fans will recognize.
Edit to add: the gameplay is somewhere between Assassin's Creed and Uncharted, with some space combat thrown in. Mix of stealth and cover-based blaster action.
Well, I don't have hardware for that and I can think of many other ways to spend money than upgrading my 10+ years old PC (apart from SSD and GTX1650 which are the newest parts and make it kinda borderline gaming PC even today).
Mentioning Assassin's Creed - I have played Black Flag (and the other one that came after and was assassin goes templar style) and AC3 Liberations. All of those are better games than Fallen Order while also having some things in common. I really didn't expect Fallen Order to let me so down. But seeing reviews it seems like the problem is me, not the game.
Black Flag is absolutely great! I don't olay AC games and I bought this one simply because of the setting and I was blown away. Really great game. Played on PS3 for a bit and then on Switch Lite where I mde it to 99% completion with just a few achievements remaining locked that I really didn't want to go after. I'm not hardcore player and thy would be a chore for me.
I appreciate your point of view, but both Fallen Order and now Survivor have something that many of those other games - which I also enjoyed, even going back to the old Jedi Knight games! - have missing for me: stickiness.
Something about the design of these games makes them stick for me. I often play a game for a while and then bounce to a new one. It's one of the worst ways my ADHD manifests, because even with a game like Witcher 3 that I put 270 hours into, or Kingdom Come: Deliverance, which I put another 230 into... Well, embarrassingly, I never actually finished either game.
Fallen Order is the only game in my recent memory that I've actually completed the story of. Survivor seems on track to be the same. Part of it is that I love the Star Wars setting - especially that time which is highlighted here, the fall of the Republic, the birth of the rebellion, the height of Imperial power. Another part is that for some reason the combat style featured in these games just clicks for me.
I disagree that swapping things out Eg with HP elements would lead to the same game. I played Hogwarts Legacy and pretty quickly bounced off, and while I see what could lead you to say it's essentially a reskin, I don't feel that it is.
Is Fallen Order ground breaking? No. It's fun, engaging, and well paced, and that's enough for me.
Our views are completely.opposing each other's :-) Yet we are both ok with how we view the game (my with my view and you with yours).
I play games from start to finish. I did this recently, well since March, actually, with Witcher 3. I have put 200 hours in it in six months not playing that much of any other game (they were mindless games like American Truck Simulator, for example). Maybe this is why I feel let down with Fallen Order. I have olayed game that I consider superior to FO right before I went into it.
i kinda like Fallen Order's combat style, I got used to using force in my favor, yet I still lack in blocking/parrying. Still I can fight in the game. But I don't play games to be good at their action scenes. I play games to enjoy them. And while I can fight in the game, I lack the enjoyment. Righr now I webt through Venator wreckage and it was one of the best parts of this game, which is kinda sad, isn't it? What was good about it? Exploration, platforming. But if I wanted this kind of joy from a game, I know other games that do this better. If I want combat, I know other games that do this better. And I can say this about every aspect of Fallen Order. It doesn't stand out (enough) for me.
Just my point of view. I can totally understand that your view is very different. Somebody likes dogs, other people may like cats, I see no problem :-)
I played "Mouthwashing" this weekend and I don't think I've had a game stick with me so depressingly. It's a really good experience and I wish I had more people to discuss it with, it's haunting.
Otherwise, this weekend was a board game weekend with all my friends and family being around the same place. Played a lot of Mahjong, played some Scout, taught my friend how to play Kelp, and of course got a lot of Mario Party and Jackbox in there too!
I'm travelling next week so I have Nine Sols ready for the plane ride, looking forwards to blasting through that!
I've just finished Metaphor ReFantazio last weekend. While the ending was mweh in my opinion, the journey certainly was not. Despite the game being filled with cliches the end result was still very fresh. While I didn't expect a fantasy JRPG from Atlus, I very much enjoyed it. I would still prefer something new, but it's nice for them to get out of their comfort zone, in a way.
Apart from that, just started with Tactical Breach Wizards. And so far I love it. The humour and gameplay are both fantastic.
Last night I picked up Tactical Breach Wizards (TBW) and I’m very impressed.
My first exposure to tactical games like TBW was Final Fantasy Tactics and Front Mission on the PS. Of course I’ve also dipped my toes into XCOM and most recently I’ve been playing Valkyria Chronicles. But for some reason on which I could never quite put my finger, I kept bouncing off those games.
But last night with TBW, everything clicked. Tactics was just a puzzle to solve and I delighted in taking my time to solve it. The game has a lot of mechanics that make the tactical puzzle solving easier. It lets you rewind back to the start of your turn, undoing every move you’ve made until you commit to a sequence and pass the turn to the opponents. It also lets you magically “foresee” and respond to enemy actions on your turn, and since it’s still your turn you can rewind and try something else until you’re satisfied. Finally, there’s no chance of missing. Whatever the action says it does, it will do. If it says 2 damage, it will always do 2 damage. This is what makes the game a kind of puzzle solving that really satisfies me.
Looking back, it’s easy to see that randomness was a big part of why I bounced off other tactics games. On Saturday I was playing Valkyria Chronicles and I spent 2 hours on one mission only to lose in the end because I missed the last shot I could make on a turn. On the enemy’s turn, they rolled over my camp with one hit of health left and I lost. If I wanted to make progress, I’d have to replay the last 2 hours, just to hope that I get lucky and make that shot this time.
In my last review, I talked about bouncing off Elden Ring and enjoying Nier Automata because it’s much less punishing. Games that punish me and set back my progress don’t make me want to keep at it and get better. But games like TBW that reward experimentation make me fully lose track of time as I try to nail every last goal and get a perfect turn.
And I haven’t even mentioned how TBW lets you get creative with combining effects from different abilities. The simplest example is an ability that lets one wizard lay a trap and shoot an enemy as soon as they step on a square, which combines nicely with an ability that knocks an enemy to a different square. The combination of ability effects and rewind mechanics makes each turn of TBW feel like a sandbox of toys to play with and craft something perfect.
It doesn’t hurt that TBW also builds an interesting world through characters that are absolutely charming.
The dev commentary for the first couple of missions is interesting too, where they talk about what their design intent was. There's that mission early on that "forces" you to win in a single round which was hugely important to them. Because to them, it showed the player you could take your time, get comfortable with the rewind function, find multiple solutions, and realize that this was not xcom but its own puzzle strategy game and yes you can experiment as much as you want to get the desired outcome. Sounds like you picked up on their intentions!
Oh, that’s rad! I’ll have to play through again with the commentary. Thanks for mentioning it. :)
As a note, it's a lot slower than a regular playthrough! You need to pick up the recordings during gameplay and it'll unceremoniously stop playing as soon as you end the level, so it forces you to wait around and listen.
Oh! Very good to know. I’ll be prepared. :)
This week has been tough. I bounced between a bunch of games to be honest.
I booted up Star Wars: The Old Republic after seeing a post about how well it holds up in 2024 and I actually had fun for a few hours, but it didn't stick. I might go back when I'm more in the mood for something engaging and story heavy.
I installed Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries which has been in my "to play" list for years. After the release of the new game I think its a good time to grab the DLC and some mods and go for it. But I got caught up on the fact it's coop and wanted to play with my Brother who's been busy this week.
Finally I finally installed Factorio with Space Age and got started. I haven't launched a rocket since they added them in beta whatever, so it feels like over cominging writers block to try and get that far to be honest. But so far I've got as far as planning my robot and blue circuit builds so I'm feeling pretty good about this one.
It's been nice because I've been able to just stick on a YouTube video on a second monitor and chill, where as the others needs a bit of engagement.
I've been playing Drova - Forsaken Kin.
It's a nice little RPG. Challenging, but fair. Great story and lore. Overall a fantastic experience.
Excited to see another Drova player! My best advise is to throw yourself hard in as a remnant or Nemeton supporter, it will make the game story arc play out a lot smoother for you.
If you've already played chapter 3/4 you'll know what I mean.
Otherwise, glad you're enjoying it. What weapons are you using?
I've been using bleeding fists with shield and since I've got the runestone I've been increasing mind to spice things up with magic.
Final Fantasy X-2 was going great until I immediately encountered a game breaking roadblock that was making me crash to desktop in every encounter in Besaid Cave.
Old School RuneScape currently has Leagues V out. The accelerated XP rates, relics and masteries are making the game a blast. It's too bad you're restricted to 5 areas throughout the whole season and two of them have to be Misthalin and Karamja.
I've been an avid fan of deck builders, playing several hundred hours between slay the spire (including downfall) and inscryption. Lately I haven't really played them outside of travelling with my steam deck, since there's only so many times you can go through a20 or the kaycee's mod's decks before it gets a little repetitive.
I finally got around to playing Monster Train this past week since it was free from prime gaming recently. It's definitely scratching the itch that StS did. I've already bought the DLC. Just nice to play something new and learn what interactions work in this game.
Yes! As I was reading your first paragraph I thought to myself "ooh I should recommend Monster Train, they'd probably love it" and then I got to your second paragraph and laughed.
Great game! I too love deckbuilders and have a few hundred hours between StS and Monster Train. Both very different games but both plenty deep and beautifully polished.
Ditto. I enjoy Monster Train so much I even bought it on three different platforms; PC, Switch, and iOS. :P
Waiting for my kid to pop out and I was looking for a mindless but satisfying game. I have never watched a vtuber stream in my life, but somehow my friends were gushing about HoloCure enough that I landed on that - it feels like it's the best distillation of Vampire Survivors that I've played. Good pacing, the weapons feel fairly differentiated, the skills between characters do a good job of making everyone feel unique, there are a TON of characters to back that up, and it feels challenging without being cheap or grindy. The combo item system doesn't feel quite as pigeonhole-y as VS did, either. All for the price of free!
I too have heard good things about it, but figured I would be missing out by not knowing anything about the characters in the game. So thanks for the insight, maybe I'll give it a shot later.
And congrats!
I’ll stop mentioning Black Ops 6 now because it’s just a given that I’m still playing it (now prestige 5, I have played like 100 hours in just over a month, please help).
However, I am playing two new games! Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 definitely has both bugs and some balance issues in the career mode. I haven’t touched career mode yet as a result, but when I’ve been doing free flight, the sim itself is noticeably better than 2020. The visuals and performance seem improved, it no longer takes up hundreds of gigabytes (instead, data of the area you’re flying in is streamed and cached, it works better for me personally but I understand why others might want data permanently on their drives), the flight model is better, the UI is better, and taxiing feels much better. Overall the improvements over 2020 are worth it to me personally, but for most people, I’d recommend holding off until there are some more fixes.
I also picked up Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown and it has rocketed up to one of my favorite games of all time after getting about 15 hours in. I’m a huge metroidvania fan and this blows most of them out of the water. The visuals and sound design are stunning, the character and enemy design is great, the combat is fun and varied and, most importantly, the traversal feels incredible. I also appreciate a focus on proper platforming, where some parts are even harder than some hard Celeste levels. I’m in love with this game and I don’t have anything bad to say. I reckon I’m about 3/4 of the way through the story, but I’m also making sure to explore every room now that I got what I think is the last traversal upgrade.
Also, I’m really digging the setting and story. I have never played a Prince of Persia game before and I know most of them aren’t metroidvanias, but I definitely need to check out some of the other games in the series now. It’s also making me want to go back and finish Assassin’s Creed: Mirage for more Middle East setting stuff.
I absolutely loved Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time back in the day. It's not a metroidvania in the slightest, but the parkour puzzle solving really hit a sweet spot for me. I also love the soundtrack (I had the whole thing on my playlist for a while) and the minimal but touching story. The combat is not awful, but unfortunately even though they tried to make the moveset varied, it really only makes sense to stick to a few moves.
I bounced off every other PoP since, but I would have really loved to give The Lost Crown a go. I just wish they didn't require a login to play a singleplayer game, as that's a dealbreaker for me.
Archangel Cassiel of Celerity is sitting on a bench near St. Peter's welcome booth, at the Gates of Heaven. She's engaged, with her bestie Puriel of Purity, in their favorite pastime: Watching all the newly arrived souls walk by.
Normally they're all dogs, because all dogs go to heaven, and certainly none of those "humans" do. Those apes couldn't behave if their souls depended on it. But all of a sudden, something different arrives: It's a massive horde of phantoms! The paradox immediately causes Heaven to explode, putting an end to everything.
Except it's not quite over yet. Death ("Azrael") appears to Cassiel and admits to having accidentally killed a bunch of people whose time wasn't up yet, causing the paradox. Cassiel is given a stopwatch that can rewind time and tasked with fixing everything by preventing the phantoms from reaching heaven, which can be accomplished by deploying at the Gates an artifact of unimaginable power, created by God Himself: The Holy Gosh Darn!
THGD is a "universe sequel" to Helheim Hassle, even though it's a different genre: Helheim Hassle was a puzzle platformer, but THGD plays more like a point and click adventure game with no pointing or clicking, and with very minor platforming (think Night in the Woods). If you played Helheim Hassle, you may spot cameos from familiar characters! Foul-mouthed, ever increasingly more annoyed angel Cassiel and her pal Death are just as compelling and likeable a duo as meek, kind-hearted zombie viking Bjorn and his partner Pestilence. THGD is, as you have probably assumed by now, a very goofy game; the humor is on point. Expect some biblical jokes.
Gameplay is constructed around the time loop mechanic, which I'd say cribs ideas from games like Outer Wilds, Braid or Prince of Persia. If Cassiel doesn't do anything, the same things will happen deterministically at certain times during the six (in-game) hour period during which Cassiel must prevent Heaven's destruction. With no time to lose, Cassiel will be increasingly more rude to everyone in order to cut their long rambling dialogue short and get on with it, as she investigates solutions and procures key items. The stopwatch can be used to fast forward and go back in time to certain positions or to a checkpoint the player can freely assign. There's a slew of optional objectives as achievements, including finding and disrespecting 23 elders (not easy!)
Keeping an eye out for side objectives - but without being a completionist - you can complete the main part of this game in about 10 hours. I enjoyed it a lot!
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I love that game! Played through it a month or two back and had a wonderful time. I'll probably play Helheim Hassle in the not too distant future.
Did you play Manual Samuel, the first in the "trilogy"?
I don't think I was aware it existed before seeing the "ad" in the opening screen of THGD! I might get it someday. Helheim Hassle I did beat very thoroughly. Just a word of warning, as a puzzle platformer, HH may be a little harder since it requires timed platforming sequences with precision jumping and "aiming" throws (I won't spoil the exact mechanic...)
Factorio Space Age, as expected.
On the surface, I haven't made much progress since my last post, but my factory has changed significantly. As of my last post, my Fulgora base was running pretty well, my Gleba base was in shambles, my Vulcanus base was functional but very small, and my Nauvis base was pretty neglected. Fulgora, despite running well, was headed towards uselessness because of how I setup my scrap sorter. In retrospect, I think many of my issues with Gleba were because I was trying to make it self-sufficient instead of utilizing interplanetary logistics.
My Nauvis mines were running dry, and it really needed an expansion. At my last post, I was building all the base game sciences here, and I didn't have the infrastructure to support it. I ended up moving almost all the science to Vulcanus because getting the materials infinitely from lava is insanely powerful. I completely removed my Nauvis base (still using belts and a small bot mall) and replaced it with a mostly train base with a large, speed beaconed bot mall. It also does a lot of uranium processing, since all my ships are nuclear powered, and my Gleba base will be Nuclear powered as well. It is now using foundries and electromagnetic plants wherever possible. I really like having fluid trains of molten iron and copper. My bulk production consists exclusively of uranium products, oil products, blue circuits, low density structures, and rocket fuel. Everything else is made in 1 or 2 assemblers in a speed beaconed mall. The goal is to not have any science production here, but to be able to provide any mall type items to planets I don't want to set up a mall on. Vulcanus and Fulgora already have pretty extensive malls, so this is mostly for my future Gleba base, space platform building, and Aquilo, once I get the science and make a ship to go there.
In my last post, my Vulcanus base was small and only build artillery ammo and the Vulcanus science. I had the ability to take out small demolishers, but couldn't take on medium demolishers. I now have the 100 car artillery train I mentioned and can pretty easily take out medium demolishers. I haven't tried large demolishers, but I want to try and get railguns before I take on those. The medium demolisher territory has been plenty for expansion so far. I started my base upgrade by building purple science, but ironically was always short for stone. I fixed my stone shortage by just building the other sciences on Vulcanus and exporting their extra stone on trains. I also realized that there is no point in sending science back to a central rocket hub to send up to space platforms. Instead, I use a "Rocket on a Train" setup. It's a 2-3 train that includes a full cargo wagon each of rocket fuel, blue chips, and LDS. I then have 5 productivity moduled rocket silos at each science plant. Science gets directly inserted and is ready to launch before the ship is even in orbit, no robot interaction required. I also ended up using this same setup for science on Fulgora. It makes my science deliveries much more reliable, and saves my main rocket silos (which are speed beaconed as well as productivity moduled) available for general usage. I also setup green belt production. A single foundry each for belts, undergrounds, and splitters has been plenty for my current factory buildout (and they are mostly starved for lubricant, but I haven't needed to upgrade that yet). I skipped blue belts entirely and now I use green belts exclusively for all my builds on all planets. The green belts in particular made scrap sorting on Fulgora significantly better. The only difficult part is oil products, but I just got really good at setting up advanced coal liquefaction. Once you get a feel for how it works, it's very simple to get any oil product you need on Vulcanus.
In space, I ended up rebuilding my go-to space platform from scratch. It is my fourth redesign. I really wanted to unlock advanced asteroid processing before redesigning my ship, but I just did it now because my old ship was not good enough. I found out that I don't like having spaceship specific items in the main storage area (ammo, fuel, asteroids, etc), so all of that is on belts. The only exception is nuclear reactor fuel, since that has to be imported. My new ship is much leaner. It has something like 12 gun turrets, and my previous one had more than 50. Most of that is because I didn't do any gun damage research, and now have it up to level 7 or so. This platform is limited by fuel and oxidizer production (1 chemical plant each with speed 2 modules), but it suits my needs for now. It also stocks enough resources for a round trip instead of a single trip. My last setup used a few ships that made continuous loops around the solar system to deliver items. Now I have each ship stationed above a home planet. It always keeps a set number of items (green belts, calcite, science, etc) in inventory. When any item is zero (and it has enough fuel and ammo), it uses an interrupt to restock everything from the source planet. So these spend most of their time idle, acting as inventories for the planet. I can increase the throughput by just plopping down more ships. So far, I have 4 ships stationed above Nauvis, and this has been plenty for science, calcite, and green belts. I like this pull and store system much better than the round robin system I was trying to do before. It is also how I generally set up my trains.
Fulgora is the one I am working on rebuilding now. I setup yellow science here, but I was limited by copper wire. I had tried to quality module my miners and scrap recyclers to get all those high quality materials, but I now think that was a bad idea. Scrap recycling already has 10 products to deal with. Adding quality to that means I now have to deal with 40 products (I have up to Epic unlocked). It is just too much to do on the small Fulgora islands. I may go back to it when I get some good production of foundation from Aquilo. My first gen Scrapinator was primarily bot based, and is always short on logistics storage, which backs up the entire production. I decided I need to redesign it from the ground up. This time I wanted to use belts instead of bots (those green belts will work way better than my previous red belts). I set up a good rail blueprint on a grid and built a rail directly south until I found a nice big island. The one I ended up at even had some smaller islands within electric range, so I could have my accumulators out of the way. My goal is to process 4 belts of scrap continuously. I also adapted the receiving station and fueling station to work with any trains up to 6 length, with locomotives and wagons in any location, so that I can have different locomotives for different scrap islands. My original 2-4 design was a bit restrictive for the smaller islands. I am also planning on having the overflow items be scrapped into source products and make those available, instead of just scrapping them into nothing (for example, have overflow gears scrap into iron plates and export those to trains, instead of just going gears > plates > nothing when I overflow on gears. With no bots, it's much simpler to see when consumption outpaces supply, and overflow splitters make it easy to discard the extra. I have this new Scrapinator mostly functional. I decided I am not going to worry about scrapping overflow until that overflow actually backs up. I need to deal with gears for now, but once I get those sorted, I should have scrap products flowing again.
I took another stab at Gleba, and did pretty decently. That is until a stomper went to the middle of my undefended base, destroyed the power poles leading to my Tesla turrets, and demolished my entire base. In Dosh's video on Space Age, he keeps Gleba as an outpost without any self-sufficiency. I think I want to do the same. I will export a continuous stream of science, some bioflux, some carbon fiber, and import absolutely everything for the base. Infinite copper and iron was intriguing, but I also have infinite copper and iron on Vulcanus (okay I guess Calcite isn't technically infinite until asteroid processing, but I have a multi million patch that has been fueling my entire base for a long time, and many more patches I can tap after that gets low). I will admit the extremely cheap infinite rocket fuel is tempting, but I don't think I want to bother with it yet. Fulgora also has incredibly cheap rocket fuel, so I can just supply Gleba's fuel needs from Fulgora for the time being. I really just want to get Gleba science reliable enough that I don't have to go back in the near future. I just want to get me some spidertrons. With the exception of the Gleba science stuff, I feel like I am ready for Aquilo in terms of my infrastructure. After I get Gleba working and stabilized, I think I want to get biolab production going to increase my science rate, and then focus on getting to Aquilo.
I am still having a ton of fun. Steam says I just broke the 1000 hour barrier, making Factorio my most played steam game by more than 500 hours. Next is TF2 at 480 hours and elite dangerous at 337 hours. I think it was at around 600 or so before Space Age, so I guess I have been playing a lot recently. I also played a bit before Factorio was on steam, though I have no idea how much. I think Factorio is the only product I have followed throughout almost its entire life like this. It feels weird to think about how I originally played Factorio when it was a much different game. Back in my day, we picked up purple blobs from biter nests to make science. The gun turrets were 1 by 1. I distinctly remember updating my map when they were switched to 2x2, and I had a wall of double density turrets. I kinda want to go back and do a play through of one of the older versions.
I've been juggling a couple games, but Arx Fatalis really hooked me good (using the Libertatis source port). It's a 2002 fantasy RPG from Arkane. I was looking for a bit of classic dungeon crawler action and had bought this after I think kfwyre was enjoying it. I'm not even sure I can put into words what exactly makes it click and come together for me, but in a sense it feels more like a fantasy immersive sim than a standard RPG.
One of the most unique aspects that I quite like is the spellcasting system. To prepare a spell, you draw runes (using your cursor) and spell out the spell you want to cast. So you can ignite flammables by using "create fire", or modify that to make a fireball by spelling "create fire projectile", or a fire field with "create fire space". The runes don't have in game translations, so you kinda form your own translation, but the meaning is apparent as you use them. While the spell book automatically populates new spells when you learn a new rune, there are secret spells you only learn through experimentation. It's a cool system that I've only seen a similar incarnation of once before in a DS game. It does lose a bit of its novelty after drawing create fire projectile for the hundredth time, but generally I'm swapping up my repertoire and that's the only spell I've gotten annoyed with (and mostly bc I'm bad at drawing the projectile rune in a consistent enough way for the game to recognize). It does feel pretty cool to whip up a new spell on the spot or quickly draw a variety of spells just from remembering how the runes fit together/spell out a spell than just memorizing the movements, so even losing novelty doesn't make it feel like a cheap gimmick but a fun and thought out mechanic.
I never found Arx to really click for me for some reason. I love ImSims and have played most of them; I put 11-hours into Arx, but just kind of got bored and stopped playing. It ended-up feeling very repetitive to me, eventually and none of the environments really stood out all that much as they ought to in an ImSim.
I really wanted to like it, but just never really felt compelled to play more.
I've been playing Amber Isle. It's yet another entry in that "life sim" category like Stardew or Animal Crossing. A lot of the mechanics remind me of Dreamlight Valley more than any other (but no microtransactions or Disney). Maybe comparable to My Time At series but with much less fleshed out characters, less story, no combat, and with selling focused more than crafting. You run a shop selling things you craft from the wood/stone/etc you find on the island. The core gameplay loop is a simple matter of going through 4 phases per day, for each phase you either run the shop or go harvest material. Mixed in there you unlock more biomes on the Island, build (well, place) houses for your new residents, and run sidequests for them which mostly consists of giving them materials you harvested.
It lacks the depth of the big names in the space, that is there's not many side activities/minigames you can do to break things up. You're running the shop 3/4 times per day and the rest of the time wandering the map collecting materials and looking for sidequests. There's no time limit per phase, so you spend more real-time harvesting until your pockets are full than anything else. But the gameplay loop of those two activities gets a bit redundant after a while. It works out decently for me because I like to read in the evening too, so when I get a bit tired of the repetition I take a break to read a chapter... But that's hardly a gold star characteristic.
The art style is nice, the characters are numerous and have colorful, cartoonish personalities with likes/dislikes. Sadly that color blends together after a while with how many residents there are and how little you interact with each (and with no nostalgic IP like Dreamlight Valley). You can build relationships by selling to/talking to/hanging out with them which gives you more money when in your shop. It's fully family friendly so there's no "Relationship" mechanics.
I've hit a few bugs but nothing game-breaking. A bit more polish would be useful though. There's some things I quite dislike, such as the need to memorize the categories of your items and likes/dislikes of residents. it doesn't explain things like "why do some residents randomly dislike your store layout" and there's not a mature wiki to reference for such issues. Overall it's yet another life sim for those who enjoy the genre, but hardly one I expect to ever go back to after I move onto another game.
Elden Ring, it doesn't bring much new compare to other DS games (same overall principles and story) but it's still enjoyable and high quality (art is awesome). I'm doing the DLC now. I hope they would take a bit more risks with the narrative.
Apparently there's a Bloodborne emulation on PC now, but maybe I'll do Sekiro next.
You inspired me to try emulating Bloodborne on my PC and I haven’t stopped playing it since. A few crashes here and there, like 2 in ~8 hours of gameplay. Luckily the nature of From games means a crash only sets you back a minute tops, so it’s hardly been a problem. It chugs a little at 2k60 on my 3070ti, but 1080p60 is pretty flawless. Also load times feel instant on NVMe compared to the absolute ages it took to load an area on PS4.
Thanks for mentioning that!
Cool, apparently the emulator is still getting patched, so things should get even better in the coming months.
Warhammer 40K: Darktide. Man, Fatshark really nailed the sound and combat design on this one. It has such a satisfying gameplay loop; I just keep coming back to piling into a crowd of enemies with my 8-foot-tall thick-as-mince Ogryn. I love the crunchy feedback from wheeling a giant pickaxe overhead into a mauler's helmet and crushing it like a can of spaghetti bolognese beneath an elephant's foot. I never tire of crashing a big metal mace the size of a bollard into a line of heretics and watching them go clattering across the floor like bowling pins, while their comrades break and flee in jibbering panic.
Panic, mayhem, slaughter and rations. Gruttin' greeeeaaat!
Finished Star Wars Outlaws yesterday. 53 hours of play time from start to finish. Was waiting for the Steam release, and after checking that most negative reviews were just rants about Ubisoft rather than anything about the actual game, I decided that it was good enough to buy. The shooting feels good pulling off satisfying consecutive headshots with quick mouse movements. Picked up weapons are as punchy as they should be, given that they are always temporary. Should be noted that I set player health difficulty to hard, while enemy health difficulty stayed at normal. This was to prevent the worst of potential bullet sponges without making combat too easy.
I like how the quests are primarily sniffed out by listening to conversations rather than the usual quest givers. Unfortunately there is not a whole lot of variety in the actual gameplay during these small side quests. The most memorable quest was actually the DLC, which complemented the ingame card game beautifully.
As for the open world, it is split between 2 'proper' open worlds planets, 1 semi open world planet (a lot of corridors linking places, rather than fully open map), and one planet where only a settlement is accessible. All of these worlds are truly beautifully crafted and appropriately sized for the amount of content. Also plenty of rewards for exploration.
The story is ok. Just ok. I get the feeling that it was trying to be a bit emotional, but that didn't really hit me.
As for bugs, I didn't get any crashes so that's good. There is particularly one bug that I got 4-5 times which was annoying, and that is when multiple cutscenes or dialogues play on top of each other. For dialogue it is just annoying. For cutscenes it made me ALT+F4 and replay to avoid triggering both cutscenes at the same time. I think there were a few other bugs that made me exclaim how buggy the game was, but I can't remember what those bugs were so they couldn't have been too bad.
Overall a fine star warsy RPG.
I'm currently in Japan and have been enjoying Densha De Go (電車でGO!) more than I thought I would. For the unfamiliar, Densha De Go is a train simulator game where you can either drive or conduct various trains available throughout Japan. I've been playing the arcade version which has you driving a Yamanote Line train, which is one of the main JR train lines circling Tokyo. The game seems simple on the surface, at least for the driving. You're simply accelerating and braking at the correct moments to get the train from station to station and stop the train at the correct position in the station. It's quite relaxing but also kinda addicting trying to stop the train at exactly 0cm while scoring as long a chain as you can.
The only difficult part about the game is the fact that it's entirely in Japanese. All versions of the game from 1996 till now have only been in Japanese with only some UI elements in English. Luckily, the game has a decent English-based following, to the point that there are English guides to help you figure out what everything means. I've just relied on those to figure the basics out and have fun. Definitely recommend anyone into trains try it out. I'm still in Japan for the next few days and am kind of tempted to buy it for the Switch to take back home.
Wildfrost
Got this from the Jingle Jam. It's a roguelike deckbuilder that I've been playing on my steam deck, finished a run with the true final boss today. I think I read somewhere that it was inspired by Monster Train and I can see some influences: putting units on the field to fight and protect the lose condition, potential upgrades that can utterly break a card in the good way, and the road that splits into 2 between each fight for different item sources/stores. Instead of an energy system, each unit has a counter that ticks down after each card played so it could also be interpreted as each card played takes up a turn. Pretty smooth and fun overall, but I think my biggest peeve with it is how the run ends as soon as the leader unit goes down due to the lack of safeguards like a combat preview (which might be because Aimless units fire at random targets) or a limited amount of rewinds/death preventions; making a minor tactical/positioning error and instantly losing the run for it leads to a pretty sour feeling for not being 100% locked in.
Mostly, my victories have been due to Demonize (unit takes double damage), stacking Frenzy (multihits), and Overburn (when unit hp goes below Overburn stack, it explodes its row with the amount of Overburn). One particular victory was from adding a Balance charm to Nova to lower the turn count from 12 down to 3 with the innate ability to hit all enemies, and then copying a Lumin charmed Krono for 2 structures that added +4 frenzy total, +6 using the vase.
Spoilers - Something I like about the Final Boss
If you win against the final boss, but don't meet the conditions for the true final boss, your team becomes possessed and turns into the new final boss of your future runs. Since the true final boss isn't possible until Storm Strength 10, it becomes interesting to draft a new team to counter your old one and continuously refining the process against yourself as your teams get better. Once you do beat the true final boss, the final boss reverts back to the default one which is kind of a shame.