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

For whatever reason, I've discovered Fortnite. I've been playing lots of it. Last year, it was War Thunder, which I have not touched since last August.

I keep coming back to Nova Drift. It's Asteroids as a rogue lite with some shades of Geometry Wars—though that does it little justice.

The visuals are beautiful. The action starts slowly yet builds to a frenetic pace. The customization options are absurdly deep with multiple viable powerful builds emerging from various permutations of "upgrades".

I can't quite explain how this game became one of my happy places. Perhaps it's the size, volume, colorfulness, and noise of the explosions—like the best parts of July 4th fireworks as a game. Perhaps it's the emergent complexity. Or just the way that each play through evolves from strategy to flow state.

I can't recommend this gem enough.

I'm currently playing Super Mario Odyssey - I'm super late to the party, I know (or should I say Mario Party hehehehe). I guess to no one's surprise, I'm enjoying it lots. It's wild to me how varied the visual rewards are for going out of your way to collect moons. The possession mechanic is very fun. I was a bit wary that collectathon 3D platformers aren't for me... mostly because the last one I played was Yooka-Laylee and I thought it wasn't very good. I guess I just needed to play a good one (I should get into a Hat in Time).

Outside of that, my spouse and I have gotten back into Don't Starve Together. It's taken a few attempts but I think we've better at it (again). It remains to be seen if we can finally kill the Antlion, or any of the non-seasonal bosses.

I've been playing Grand Theft Auto 5 here and there, steadily making progress through the story. I believe I posted about it last week and mentioned I hate the characters, which I still do. That said, I just got to the introduction of Trevor and...I don't hate him? I mean, he's obviously a piece of shit, but he's so over the top that he doesn't seem as offputting as Michael does (and to a lesser extent, Franklin). Anyway, I'm enjoying it so far; I do wish it ran a little better on my laptop so I could play it in my Den and while I still can, I get frequent frame dips, as it's hitting that 15w processor very hard.

I've also been spending some time with Star Trek: The Next Generation - A Final Unity an old DOS Star Trek game that was mentioned to me on a different forum. I'm not very far in it yet, but I absolutely love it. It was clearly crafted by people who love TNG and know how the universe works, so it's primarily an adventure game where you send away teams to planets to solve various issues. You can also cruise around in Federation Space and the opening has you patrolling the Neutral Zone. The Computer has a very detailed and elaborate Codex to it that gives you all kinds of information from specifications of the ship to various crew members, different species in the universe and on and on. It is excellently detailed.

As per it being clearly crafted by people who care, I did find out that it was actually supposed to be a proper episode or series arc in the TV show, so it was written by genuine writers for the show. They also have, far as I can tell, the vast majority of the actual cast giving pretty damned good performances. Anyway, it's abandonware at this point, so it's pretty easy to find and some community members have done work to make sure it still can run in modern Windows. I did run into some issues running it on my Windows 11 laptop, but I didn't bother to solve them as I realized I could instead play it on my emulation handheld instead, which is what I'm doing. I'm betting it would work great on Deck through Dosbox as well, but I have't tried.

I also have been messing around with Turtle WoW again. I've been on the server for maybe 5 years now and just drop in periodically to do some questing and get some levels. My friends recently jumped back in, which prompted me to get back on my Priest, which I just hit 36 with; at this point I'm doing the "Anywhere but Stranglethorn Vale" quest run, so I'm hitting up various parts of the world to do quests in a less populated, less annoying zone. I'll probably get myself prepped to do Scarlet Monastery with my friends this weekend.

I've just finished My sexy neighbor right now!

I paid like 6€ for it and finished it in 3 hours. I enjoyed it more than if I went to pub and had a beer for those 6€.

It is kinda Splinter Cell/Thief game with sexual content. You have to spy on your sexy neighbor effectively playing as creepy weirdo. You have to sneak around and in her house planting cameras and other things while taking "souvenirs". The game is built around observing paths and taking advantage of free space whenever possible. You have some tasks to do that eventually lead to unbelievable situations (your neighbor stuck in a washing machine, for example; have you ever seen anyone stuck in washing machine in real life???). You gain experience and unlock perks (like being able to climb uo the water drain pipes to the second floor).

To make it short - I really enjoyed this game. I took it as parody on stealth games AND parody on porn AND parody on real looking graphics. The game is over the top in everythign that happens in it. And as I enjoy movies like Hot shots or Wronfully accused, I enjoyed this game as well - in this kind of view. There is sexual content but it is made so over the top that it won't even arouse you (that is if you don't spy on your sexy neighbors yourself, in that case you may find something that I wasn't able to in this game).

I was surprised such game even made it to storefront due to its contents (and I don't mean naked lady and erotic toys, I mean more serious stuff), but in the end the story (if we can even call it a story) makes up for this content and kinda cleared my doubt why it even made it there and I got my satisfaction about these concerns.

This isn't visual novel, this is first-person stealth game.

EDIT: Bought out of curiosity. I don't regret buying it. It is hilarious! And creepy at the same time.

I went back to STALKER Anomaly again, I just don't get tired of it. In between the many posts about it I've been cobbling together a modpack similar to what I did with Morrowind - a "definitive" pack, the one I will archive/keep updated instead of continuously building loadouts when I get the itch. I think I'm there, so after getting it going on my PC I set to work making a deck port, so to speak.

Here are some shots from that portable version. My target was to keep it around 40fps, and prioritize graphical fidelity/immersion on top of adding a few additional survivalist mechanics. I like some survivalist stuff but not quite to the extent a pack like GAMMA goes - cooking food and having to tend to location based wounds is just too much tedium for my taste. Instead I focused on doing stuff with the guns and having animations for everything.

This time around I played as Sin, a cult of halfway zombified dudes just about everyone hates, to see how difficult it would be. Every faction besides Monolith hates you, so you're limited on stuff like merchants and repair services, and have to engage more with scavenging/repairing stuff yourself. I included a mod that gives guns magazines, so there is no ammo counter/you have to stop occasionally to manually reload. At first I was iffy on it but over time came to really enjoy how it changed up the rhythm of the game. I have to plan out where I'm going to go, and when I take a location I usually need to stop, prep a bit, then make a new plan, because just running around it's easy to get caught without good means of fighting back. The faction situation means I have to engage more with the mechanics for gun/armor repair, as well as doing upgrades with stuff I scavenge instead of purchasing anything.

Yesterday I had probably the best experience yet. I was taking a squad of 7 into a map called the Army Warehouses. When we got there, we spawned into a situation where three different factions, all hostile to us, were fighting each other, and while we tried to run through to a safe spot a pack of dogs came rushing in to maul everybody. We tried running for a water tower, but by the time I got there my whole squad had been wiped. I made my way up the tower and into a covered space, then sniped folks from there until I was, best I could tell, alone.

As I descended the tower, I heard some folks, one of the factions had sent a squad after me and were taking the village surrounding the water tower. I snuck through the village with a silenced assault rifle, slowly picking off dudes unawares until I again thought I was alone. I camped inside an old house and called up a squad from home base for support, because there was no way id make it back the way I came based on the gunfire still going on from that direction. The squad was going to take a while, so I decided to try something - I took one of the corpses, put some loot on it, and dragged it out into the road running through the village. As folks from the other factions came close, they'd go for the body to loot it, and Id pick them off with my sniper rifle. For about ten minutes I just sat in a house, occasionally sniping some dipshit and eating crackers.

One guy in an exosuit managed to get to cover, so I had this incredibly tense exchange, each of us running between different parts of the village and taking shots at each other. He nearly got me more than once, I ran out of medical supplies and managed to pop him with all of about 1/4 of my health left. THEN I got a message, an emission was coming, so I ran back to the old house and smoked a cigarette while an apocalyptic wall of fire blew through the village. My backup squad died in that, so I was again alone while three hostile factions continued to make moves in the surrounding area. Out of medical supplies, low on food, and with only one magazine and my revolver left, I decided to make a break for it and charged a checkpoint down the road I knew only two dudes were manning. I managed to get em with the revolver, found some food and medicine, repaired what I could and then got back to home base, exhausted. Fuckin amazing tbh, could not ask for a better STALKER experience lol.

Guardians of the Galaxy - game is regularly given away on EGS or can be had for very cheap. Absolutely blast and a shame it didn't do better. There are a few bugs mostly related to QTE/button prompts (wrong button request like getting PS button prompts when I'm using an Xbox controller, unclear QTE requirements, having to rewatch cutscenes when failing the QTE) and for some reason, the writers made Rocket absolutely insufferable but it's well worth the play and has some interesting mechanics for your NPC allies. I'm half way in so far, I'd give it a 8/10. Doesn't hurt that the soundtrack includes what is arguably my favorite song of all time.

Orwell: Ignorance is Strength - the sequel to Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You. Much like the original game you play an agent using a super spyware network called Orwell. Your job is to investigate citizens and form a version of truth alongside another agent. The twist in these games is that whilst you have access to lots of information on citizens the only action that you're able to take yourself is sending datachunks to the other agent by adding them to the Orwell database. Doing some unlocks other documents that relate to those datachunks. Although the other agent can message you you cannot message them yourself. This means that you can control the "truth" by controlling which datachunks you send. I really enjoyed both the original game and this sequel. There's some crossover between the stories in both games so I suggest anyone interested start with the first game.

I picked up the DLC for Talos Principle 2 on sale over the holidays so I started getting into that. Very happy with it so far--feels kind of like an extended epilogue to the main game (although I don't think it necessarily picks up exactly where you left of since there are so many different ways the main game could end). The gameplay is the same, you get to learn more about the characters you already know as well as meet some new ones, the puzzles are great, and it seems like there's a ton of content. So if you liked Talos Principle 2 and haven't played the DLC I absolutely highly recommend it.

I think I also read that they're doing a remaster of the original Talos Principle, which I'm pretty sure I'll pick up and play again once it's out (even though I already purchased and played through the game twice for various consoles). These games are just so great and totally up my alley.

I finally got back to finishing the Dead Space Remake and it solidified its spot as my favorite horror game ever, and definitely in my top 15 games in general. I remember liking the original when I played it years ago, but the remake makes the Ishimura feel like one big connected ship that thousands of people lived in. Playing on hard and completing all the objectives took around 15 hours, which in my opinion, is the perfect length for a horror game. The whole thing is so absurdly well paced and doesn't fall flat in the third act like 80% of games do, especially in the horror genre.

I would love for them to remake 2, I remember liking that much more than the original, but sounds like EA is going to be EA about it, and it may never happen, which sucks.

I was gifted Tiny Glades by a friend and played it a ton over the last few days. It's a beautiful game, very relaxing, and has a surprisingly steep learning curve! Learning all the things you can do it basically a game in and of itself. Very much recommend it - probably the best cozy game I have tried

I played Caravan SandWitch, a winter sale purchase. It's a 3D sci-fi narrative open world game with exploration, fetch quests and no combat. You play as a girl who lives in a space station, but upon receiving a message from her presumed dead elder sister runs off back to the planetary colony where she grew up in order to do what she can to find her.

The world building is quite good. You will learn about the Consortium that founded the colony, as well as the native aliens, and the exploitative relationship between the two, why it came about and what its effects were. Everything fits well together and makes sense. The various inhabitants of the Cigalo colony/planet have their own stories and personalities, although unfortunately this isn't explored too much.

CSW features a designed world - like, say, The Witness, or Outer Wilds - meaning nothing is "randomly generated". It has a really great aesthetic, with toon shaded but good looking graphics, good use of color, great sound design, cozy and pleasant to explore, if (unfortunately) not very large. There is a photo mode and vistas worth using it with. There is a really nice informal climbing mechanic (think Breath of the Wild, not Jusant), surprisingly well implemented for an indie game, which really makes you feel like you can go "anywhere". There are sidequests and things and places to find.

A core mechanic in the game is your van, which you receive near the beginning of the game. The van visually displays mementos from your journey as well as technological upgrades installed by your tech wizard friend. Unlike what you might expect, your vehicle makes traversal harder, not easier, since the protagonist is so scrappy. Bringing the van with you is all about using its tools to open doors and passages and gaining access to otherwise blocked out spaces. There is a really cool and seriously underutilized sensor/hacking mode which displays electrical devices and circuits, tagged by name, most of the time to no purpose. You could almost have made a full game out of that alone.

The writing is generally atrocious. Possibly it was badly translated and localized from another language (french?) I couldn't always parse what was being said at all (dialogue is written; there is no voice acting). Often the attitudes of the characters didn't seem to make sense; they seemed forced, with contrived drama and illogical or inconsistent decisions being made. Things weren't always evenly bad, though, so I don't know. Sometimes it almost felt like they had a real writer.

There were some non-primary but serious gameplay design issues. For example, some quests require using the van to help one of the other characters. These quests force you into the van with no warning, and then force you to follow a predetermined path through the world; any attempt to alter your route too much and you're forced to redo from start. During these quests you're locked inside the van; the button to get out (prominently displayed in the UI) doesn't work. You are unable to optimize your routing through the world and do multiple quests at once; the quest will force you back into the van and you will have to drive all the way back before you're released from your torment. Fuck these quests!

Amusingly for a climbing-oriented game, there are no fall "consequences" (there is no health bar, but they could easily have teleported you to the van or something). You can just drop from fifty meters and you're fine; you don't even bend your legs to absorb the impact! In one way that's pretty good for frustration mitigation but it never stops being hilarious.

Other issues include the quest list UI not always actually telling you what you're supposed to be doing; if you took the quest in a previous play session, good luck remembering! Sometimes your action button stops working and you have to open and close the menu to get it back. It's also possible for it to be bound to two things at the same time, preventing it from doing what it should do according to the prompt on the screen. It seems like there are bugs in quest tracking and completion; I'm pretty sure I did "everything" but I failed to get some achievements I should have gotten (there are other complaints about this online).

Speaking of which, don't visit the steam forum. LGBTQ people exist in this sci-fi future, and a lot of people are very mad and preachy about that.

Overall, Caravan SandWitch was an entertaining experience with some really strong points but where the inexperience of the developers also sometimes shines through. I don't regret the discounted purchase. The game is fully playable in less than 12 hours.

Previous

Started playing Project Zomboid co-op with my partner. I struggle a bit with games that feel a little aimless (the goal seems to only be survival?) but there's some cool elements in there. It might be one of those games that's in Early Access forever, but it already has a lot going for it.

Been on a Single Player FPS kick for a bit because i do not have the mental capital for anything more involved. Been digging into the backlog and found some interesting stuff I've been sitting on

First is Battle Shapers and its a weird one. FPS rouge-lite, megaman. I do not like the cartoony artstyle that clashes with the story. I do not like the flood of dialogue with zero voice acting so its just big, obstructive text boxes. There is a comical lack of variety in builds, synergy, enemies, areas/maps and bosses. Most of the unconventional weapons are just plain bad and pale to traditional projectiles/hitscan. One required boss is extremely overtuned and will reliably kill runs that easilly exceed an hour.

But I want this studio to succeed because they have nailed action arcade gameplay. In those first few hours when you haven't hit the limits of the content, it simply plays like a dream. I wish that they opted for an arena based campaign like the Doom or Bioshock series because it feels like they could do really cool things with a focused experience and creating unique levels to leverage each ability. But you're stuck with overly generic maps, enemies and senarios because you need to cater for the rouge lite structure. And those rouge lite elements are the weakest part of the game but also where the market is. Because the tag is associated with repairability and value for money.

I'd recommend this only after you've played Deadlink, RoboQuest and Bloodshed and still need a fix. Or it'll be worth the deep sale pickup.
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The other game is Ultrakill and it sort of confirming my feelings on Boomer Shooters after dropping Boltgun earlier this year. It's fun to stretch the old Quake muscles, but only for a few hours before I'm looking for somthing more. Yes im juggling weapons and special abilities and looking for weaknesses to exploit, but I'm never walking away from a combat satisfied.

Dont get me wrong. Its a solid game and well worth the money. But its just not for me. I prefer Mullet Mad Jack, I Am Your Beast or:
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Citidel. Its another weird one that i really like. If boltgun was to recapture the old school Doom vibe, this one would be more akin to Marathon. Like you can walk into a room packed with enemies while weilding a chaingun. But it turns out a fair bit more surgical affair than if it were Doomguy. The mood is grim and the violence is so much more visceral than normal that some death sprites are just unsettling to be around. Apparently it was some gore fetish game but the dev stumbled into really good systems so toned it down. Can sort of see it so be aware.

And the unsettling vibe bleeds through everything in this game. The strange quiet through much of it. Music that feels like distant machines. The religious themes and designs. The death screams. Weird NPCs. Esoteric choices that always feels wrong. I'd call it hostile to the player but by design. Like Fear and Hunger or earlier souls games.

Not for everyone but i find it interesting. I'm tempted to pick up the sequel but maybe later this year. Right now if debating between Elden Ring DLC, finish BG3 (with a new character obviously) or PoE2 to get into while on leave.

To be boring, Ostranaughts again.
It's pretty good! I think I got another 10 or so hours since last week and I finally got a character and ship combo I was really happy with.
I lucked out and almost immediately docked with an almost intact, massive freighter. So I stripped it and made my teeny starter ship look more like a normal spaceship.
I've almost paid off my initial mortgage, then it's upwards and onwards.
I guess my goal is to get to Venus. I'd at least like to see the station there before I quit, so I'll need my own reactor and torch drive. Both of which sound complicated and expensive.
So it's a mission, but I'm looking forward to trying to make it!
Aside that I am unsure how big a ship I want to go. I've seen some of the stock extra large ships and they are massive. Like I couldn't imagine building and maintaining the thing without a crew and I can't be bothered with that micro haha.

I tried getting back into Factorio after taking a break after finishing Space Age when it released and man the early game really really sucks. It takes way too long to get going and it makes me not want to play Factorio.

Just finished playing The Talos Principle II. I had played the first one a few years back and loved it, but the sequel really did a stellar job of amping up the narrative, characters and visual appeal. The first game was a very solitary, eerie experience for all that I found it to be a wonderful time, whereas the second one had me rooting for the loveable band of nerdy, naive robots it introduced. A must-play if you're in the mood for a puzzle.

I've been playing some Tropico6 again - where you're the president of a banana republic in the Caribbean. While some of the front end issues remain, I can't get over how good it is - especially the comedy. Somehow, the devs really manage to have stereotypes as characters without being offensive and it's just. So. Damn. Good.

Now that I've finally managed to get the economy running I'm doing a sandbox(which is not quite sandbox in the usual way, just that you don't have a mission). Just to see how far I can take this.

I've been playing Trackmania United Forever again. I originally discovered the game in 2013 though I stopped playing around 2015. However, I recently picked up a Steam Deck and re-downloaded Trackmania onto it and have been playing it daily. Currently struggling through the Red/D tracks.