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

After 600 hours, I finally got the Completionist+ achievement on Balatro, meaning I've cleared every deck on every stake. I thought Black deck Gold stake was going to be the end of me but I got kind of lucky with an early scaling combo and just snuck it out.

I've started to go through the challenge decks now, but I'm also going to branch out into other roguelike deck builders because 600 hours is a lot of time to sink into one game and I'm ready to try something new!

Traveling for work without the Steam Deck so I'm been limited to mobile games for a bit.

And after last week I think I'm at my logical end for Balatro. Just finished the last jokerless challenge last night and have gold stake on my 4 favorite decks (red, faceless, blanace and heart/spade). Considered going for Ante 32 with the glitched seed or trying the cryptid mod when I'm back home but its nothing Im excited for. Beside a few stubborn unlocks, feels like there's not much more to obsess over. Its still an incredible time waster and I'd probably keep it on a device when I have a few minutes to burn.
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This morning I decided to get back to finally finish some of the high assent Slay the Spire. I was a little disappointed at first, comparing it to Balatros scale. But I lucked into a dream Silent-discard build, breeze through the first 2 maps, got wrecked by the giant head and I was hooked for the rest of the drive.

Genuinely forgot how much character is in the game. Don't think I've seen much else with this sort of absurd dreamlike artstyle and tone. Feels a lot like Alice in Wonderland meets Dark Souls. Saw that sequel trailer and glad that it's maintaining the vibe.
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Last thing I played a bit of was After Inc. Follow up to Plague Inc and the story takes place after a 99% zombie run. Basically need to rebuild society by maintaining resources, exploring the map, fighting zombies and holding power.

At first it felt almost trivial on the middle of 3 difficulties. But it turns out there are actually 8 levels per scenario. And it ramps up dramatically from 3 to 4. But even with that, the game seems disappointing, even compared to release Plauge Inc over 10 years ago.

Apart from The Economist, every other hero plays way too similar. And there are plenty of systems and economies to manage but it's so simplified that every scenario I've tried so far also plays nearly the same. So after a while it all just felt fairly pointless.

I think the idea might work well, but requires a level of micromanagement, detail and feedback that just isn't possible on mobile. Because this sort of hybrid colony-sim/4x only captures the worst of both styles.

Sea of Stars - I've been really loving the revival of good 2/2.5D JRPGs. The combat on this game is very dynamic and makes it doable to avoid grinding like so many others in the genre; maybe the combat is a little light, but I don't mind. The art and themes are fun, and although the story starts as a boring bildungsroman, it's starting to pick up.

Bayonetta 3 - first game of this type I've ever played. I don't understand the story at all, but it's very visually compelling. I think I'm getting a hang of the combo attacks.

Elite Dangerous - my old mainstay. Space pew pew, space trucking. Generating screenshots. Over 1100 hours and still playing occasionally.

Third week of Ostranaughts although I suspect it's my last. I didn't get much done this week. Just messed around more with my ship and started collecting parts for a reactor. All in all it's solid, I would recommend to anyone looking for a reasonably space ship building game with a little RPG in there too.

I also tried the Dynasty Warriors: Origins demo as the game just came out and I want to talk about it.
I played a lot of Dynasty Warriors when I was a child with my brother and it was a great fun button smasher. But the later ones were trash. This one is really pretty sweet.
I never cared about the officer roster, but it's gone, instead you play as a nameless dude and get to RPG his skills and weapons which I like better to be honest.
On top of that, they made officer fights more interesting. They actually can kick your ass and have undogeable attacks you need to block with cancels. Makes fights actually interesting and you can still button mash the masses.
They added this cool tactical thing too where other officers (and you) and initiate some big coordinated attack but it has a wind up, which (if its the enemy) you can stop by doing something like killing enough dudes.
There's a bunch of nice qol and some more old fashioned stuff has been removed or updated to be more modern. It's actually really cool, I want to buy it.

Buutttt, it doesn't have coop. And it's like 75 euros! Which is INSANE. I am not paying that for a video game, I'd stretch to 50, but for 75 I want something like the star citizen that they promised me in 2011 or something.

Ugh anyway I guess I'll wait, upsetting. Maybe they'll add coop too at the same time as a sale comes (doubtful!)

Last Time I Saw You was, by the dev's own admission, directly inspired by Night in the Woods. Much like it, it's a mainly narrative game with a 2D sidescrolling perspective. It takes place in an October in the 1980s, in a small mountain village in Japan, where our protagonist, 12 year old Ayumi, becomes involved with the world of youkai while the town is being hit by violent typhoons.

Characters here are portrayed as human, not forest critters. The town contains a limited but varied cast of villagers, both kids and adults. And they're all adorable! In my opinion LTISY doesn't have the undertone of sadness, sometimes anger you might remember from NitW. Ayumi is pure as hell (when not hitting things with a baseball bat, read below), but everyone else is also fundamentally good. Expect plenty of hugs, apologies and good feelings.

I've pointed out time and again that the writing was quite bad in several of the games I've been playing. I'm happy to say that the writing in this game is excellent. All dialogue is perfectly localized in english (don't expect any japanese language traits in the text). Interestingly, the village is crammed full of signage and posted notices all of which is in clear japanese (kanji and kana) which added an extra dimension of fun as I tried to use my very rudimentary knowledge fo decipher what was written.

Most of the time, Ayumi is in possession of a baseball bat, and is not afraid to use it to break things, or spirits. Combat is ridiculously easy and not the focus of the game. In fact, the "hardest" thing you do with the baseball bat is the "tutorial" sequence with your friend. All platforming and puzzle solving are likewise trivial, so don't play the game for those. You will want to sit back and enjoy exploring, finding things and reading through the story/dialogue. There will be some amount of running around, retreading the same spaces (especially in town - outside town not so much) in order to do various sidequests, procure collectibles, purchase things and fulfill your objectives. If you want more of a gameplay challenge, however, there's a game-within-a-game in Ayumi's living room console, a single screen (a bit like Mario Bros.?) 1980s arcade style game that's fairly simple but extremely difficult to clear in full due to its unforgiving nature.

The art is very interesting. In the autumn, in stormy weather, Ayumi's town has a dark, melancholy quality to it. Parallax with several layers of flat, textured materials are used to give the surroundings a complex, realistic vibe. The use of light and color are masterful and you'll be able to see various different moods for the town (including, in the epilogue, the town during spring!) depending on the weather and time of day. Characters themselves (humans and youkai) are rendered much more cartoonishly in lively colored line drawings that are almost but not quite anime-like. They're animated expressively, and the effect works well.

I had a great time with this game and was sad it can be completed in less than 8 hours (not counting the arcade game). I would have been happy to spend longer in this world. It's a solid, well-made game that deserves a lot more recognition than it's getting.

I also played Neva. A higher profile release due to being made by the Gris devs and published by Devolver Digital, I'd call Neva a pure platformer with a strong story component, conveyed visually. You play as a woman with a red... cape? riding hood? and who's accompanied by Neva, a young... wolf? The store page says wolf. She clearly has antlers though, like the creature from Hilda, and her species grows pretty big. I don't know if this is part of some country's folklore or not.

Anyway, you're going on a platforming adventure with Neva, who will grow up from chapter to chapter. Neva's progression from a pup to a full fledged adult magical wolf-deer is well made; at the beginning of the game you constantly have to call her; she gets distracted and afraid and doesn't know what to do. As the game progresses, Neva becomes a reliable companion that you can ride and call to perform ranged attacks among other things, it's really cool.

Speaking of combat, surprisingly, this game has a significant combat component. The world is being slowly overwhelmed by these terrifying nightmarish shadow creatures with a corrupting influence. They are tanky, and you can only take three hits (there's a refill mechanism when you deal hits of your own with your trusty sword though). It's silly but the combat against the creepy shadows immediately brought to mind the old, extremely difficult Heart of Darkness videogame, although I'm happy to say Neva isn't in any way janky like that was.

The art is good as you might expect from the Gris developers. It makes use of strongly geometric and flat architectural elements (likewise) but also lush, complex trees and other natural elements that slowly give way to nightmarish corruption as the seasons change from Summer to Winter.

Neva will make you even sadder than Last Time I Saw You as it can be played through in about 4 hours. In fact, I completed it in one single sitting. There are optional collectible flowers that may increase your play time as they can require some retreading to find later if you missed them, but they don't add much to the game. Still, it's a good if short game; it's up to you to decide how much that's worth to you, but I don't regret playing it!

Previous

I made some substantial PC upgrades over Christmas, and picket up Red Dead Redemption 2 in the Steam sale.

When it first came out I started playing it on Xbox, and really enjoyed it. However, I was kind of annoyed with the performance, as Rockstar refused to unlock 60fps for high end consoles. The story was amazing, but I never actually made it to the end (was distracted with lots of other things at the time). Now I'm really glad I never finished it, because now that my PC is fairly modern and I have an ultrawide screen, the game is truly amazing.

I just got caught up in the story to where I was on the Xbox, and believe I still have a decent amount more to go. The story is amazing, and the game is extremely beautiful. There is sort of an added nostalgia bonus now as well - overall I would give the game a 9/10 on the relaxation scale... riding a horse through a massive countryside is a very meditative experience. Even the combat is fairly relaxing, once you get it down it becomes pretty trivial, and is more of a storytelling element in my mind.

For long horse rides, I keep a controller on hand - mashing the shift button constantly isn't too enjoyable for me. Otherwise mouse and keyboard are definitely my preference.

10/10 game, definitely in my top 10 of all time list currently.

Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom feels like a cross pollination of Mario 64 and the more bizarre cartoons of the 90s, like Cow and Chicken or Rocko's Modern Life.

You play as the titular Yellow Taxi, who was created by Morio to take on the the evil Tosla Corporation, and its founder Alien Mosk. To do this you must collect gears from various worlds, including one where you give taxi rides for pizza people to get to job interviews where it's pretty clear they'll be sold and eaten?

The mechanics are as unhinged as its setting. It's a collectathon platformer, where you play as a car, and even driving around the map, your movement is a bit floaty. And there's not really a jump button, so the platforming mostly involves flinging yourself yourself against whatever incline you find, and trying to control your journey through the air.

It's rather unintuitive. And then the game will also drip feed you other advanced mechanics, which you were always capable of doing, but are baffling and, of course, unintuitive to perform.

But the experience of pushing through the unintuitiveness and mastering the mechanics feels exhilarating. Succeeding in the game feels like breaking the game, and that just feels fun.

It's loud, colorful and obnoxious, but ultimately a competent, challenging and fun platformer. After trying the demo, I initially wrote it off as a bit too silly, but I kept coming back to it, until I finally bought it, and I have no regrets.

Hearts of Iron IV

I've repeatedly bounced off of Hearts of Iron despite liking Paradox games. It just never clicked for me.

Last couple of weeks I've been in a bit of a gaming rut, y'know those times you can't really decide what to play, and decided to go back to Paradox games. This time with the goal to actually understand the game before putting it away. Took me until the second game where I capitulated all major powers before 1941 and owned nearly the entire world. It's far, far, far easier to "win" this game compared to all others in their line-up. So much so that I'm kinda done already. In addition, this is probably their buggiest game and I've had multiple occasions where my savegame was corrupted forcing me to revert to an older save. I do play Ironman, but I also create backups of my savefiles with a script specifically for these reasons so the time lost was minimal.

I had fun getting to know the systems and while the goal to understand the game may not have been fully reached, I do think I can comfortably say I got the gist of it and gave it a fair shake.
It comes nowhere near EU4 in terms of replayability or fun, but it's a good entry nonetheless with just slightly too many faults that end up muting the overall enjoyment.

Similarly I tried this with Victoria 3, but ended up quitting and starting Hearts of Iron instead. This may have been due to the general WW2 themes I was coincidentally surrounded with through podcasts and Nebula. Perhaps for another time.

I also dipped my toe in Marvel Rivals.

Now I really don't particularly like Marvel. Neither the comics nor the movies. Sure Spiderman was alright when I was a kid, but that's about as far as I go. Point is, half of these characters are unknown to me entirely, and I care little for the other half.
But that just goes to show that the presentation and care they put into this game is something else.
I enjoy playing Overwatch Marvel Rivals. It looks and plays well and at my level there doesn't seem to be a strict "meta" yet that I need to follow to have any enjoyment whatsoever so that's a big plus.

The game is snappy and responsive, characters aren't gated behind some prohibitively expensive paywall, and matchmaking is instant with such a large playerbase. I'll be playing this on and off for a few weeks and likely drop it. I haven't had any shooter hold my interest longer than a few weeks since the early Counter Strike days, and it's unlikely that will ever happen again. I'm too old to play competitive. But for now, this is a fresh entry and it looks like it'll be an exciting distraction for a bit.

Inspired by a prior post, I played through Slime Rancher again, having completed it once years ago. Probably won't go for the Rush Mode achievements but I accomplished everything else of note. It's good and cute and I'm excited to jump into the sequel at some point.

I've also gotten into We ❤ Katamari Reroll and it's as delightful as I remember from the PS2 days. I'm not going to get a million roses this time around either.

And I'm plugging away at Elden Ring, with little idea of what is going on and just playing by vibes. I was never really into From Software's stuff after Armored Core, but I liked VI and figured I'd give them another shot. I'm dual-wielding claws most of the time and it's satisfying.

The wife and I have been enjoying the Yakuza series. We're currently playing Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (2024) which has a lot of gameplay in Honolulu, Hawaii. The story is a bit convoluted at times but it has been enjoyable overall!

If you haven't tried the series, I recommend checking out Yakuza: Like a Dragon (2020) and Lost Judgment (2021). Lost Judgement feels like it stands on its own pretty well but it is definitely more serious and slowly paced.

I’ve been playing Satisfactory these past weeks, in fact I’m making the final parts to finish the main goal of the game as I’m writing this. This game has taken over my life and I won’t probably keep playing after today but I’ll be revisiting it later in the year for sure.

I can see why Satisfactory is so beloved by many, it strikes a good balance between challenge and comfort that kept me playing when in other games I’d have stopped because of tasks becoming a chore. For example, you can deconstruct anything you’ve built and get 100% of the materials back, this makes it so much easier to just try whatever idea you have without worrying about losing progress. Also, because resources are infinite, the building itself is not cost prohibitive in the sense that you’ll have to think very carefully about what you can or can not do, just wait a bit more time and your factories will make all the parts you need to keep going.

In general there’s a sense of progress that presents solutions to problems as they start creeping up… for the most part. A good example of this is when I started exploring and wanted to expand my factories into new areas and I also got access to interdimensional storage. I can literally upload materials to the cloud and use them anywhere, solving most of my inventory problems. A not so good example, at least in my opinion, is the blueprint designer; this building is used to make groups or arrays of other buildings so you don’t have to place everything one by one, but at certain points it feels like the current iteration of the designer is not big enough for what the game is asking. Or maybe I was going overboard. The thing is that sometimes placing down 50 refineries becomes a chore even if you can plop them down 4 at a time.

Another point that’s not related to the main focus of the game, at least not directly, is movement and exploration. Moving around in Satisfactory is a joy, jumping, sliding and using the jetpack feels amazing. Even the gunplay is decent. And the progress you make with your factories empowers you in a very satisfying way, right now I feel completely in charge with my rocket fuel powered jetpack and my infinite homing ammo.

Overall, this has been an amazing gaming experience and the 250 hours I’ve spent so far have been worth it. I’ll be taking a break from it but I know my next save is gonna be so much more satisfying with my current train logistics knowledge and all the building tricks I’ve acquired so far.

On a final note, I can’t speak for the multiplayer aspect of it since I couldn’t drag anyone to play with me, such is life.

Started Frostpunk 2 last week. Not very far into it, but it's definitely different from the original. Which I kinda knew, from when the original trailer for it came out. Still learning the ins and outs on the first campaign (after the prologue/tutorial), so I don't quite have an opinion on it yet.

A friend invited me to play Terraria. I've had the game forever, but never played it. So we did a couple hours. It seems interesting enough. I've played plenty of Minecraft, so this should be up my alley? But I also played Starbound (which seems real similar to Terraria) and Core Keeper, and both fizzled out for me after a few days. We'll see.

Managed to finish my Rimworld binge which was starting to disturb my normal life. I did this by enabling all the cheats and just building whatever I wanted. It takes the edge off to know that you can do it all in 2 hours instead of 2 weeks.

Just started with High on Life. If you like Rick & Morty (which I do), this is the game for you. And also if you don't it probably is not the game for you. It's essentially a repository of things said by Justin Roiland, delivered by an FPS action adventure game.

I have finished Jagged Alliance 3 recently on my Steam Deck. Great game and true successor to Jagged Alliance 2 (for any players here on Tildes).

For people who don't know (which I presume is many) - Jagged Alliance games are strategy-tactical games where you have to hire mercs from your initial balance and go liberating sectors of the map (there is some story to it, of course) and getting money to pay your mercs for future contracts (they are paid by day). you fight for one sector at a time in turn-based combat. Mercs have statistics like strength, marksmanship, wisdom, agility, dexterity... And based on these they have roles in your team. There are many various weapons included starting with knife, through revolvers, pistols, SMGs, assault rifles, rifles, sniper rifles up to mortars. Each of these categories have quite a few to choose from and they all differ. You also get various ammo types (like HP, AP and some others) to use against different enemies. You can utilize stealth, you probably don't want to go full on because you are outnumbered almost all the time etc. In some sectors you gained, you can train militia, you can utilize services like hospital or you can order and get delivered new weapons and ammo. Your mercs go up in their stats and in JA3 they can also gain some perks.

Game leads you to different parts of imaginary country where you meet various people that have various problems - this is not RPG though. You help people but the main course of the game is still tactical battles and strategical movement across the map.

If I had to pick some game that is most similar to JA games I would probably pick old XCOM (the really old one from 1997 or whenever). It would still be far, but is probably the best comparison at least in the tactical section (where you actually fight with the mercs).

I think these games are not for average player. They want something of you. They are kinda specialized games in this age of other games making themsleves rather more mainstream and more accessible. I like that we still can get and play such specialized game.

Now I started playing Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves (I presume Uncharted 4&5) without ever playing any pevious ones.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice: I hopped into Elden Ring to run around a bit. I've finished New Game so I was just exploring the world and seeing what I stumbled into. It reminded me how much I love these games. So I spun up Sekiro since I've never made much progress in it. I am really enjoying myself and my parry skills are much better than they've ever been after playing some Nine Sols and other soulslikes.

I did run into Hirata Castle a bit early and started getting stuck so I think I'll return to Ashina Outskirts in my next session.

I've been playing The Stanley Parable since it was given away on Playstation Plus. I'd heard great things about it and many people recommended going in blind, but I think I'm missing something. The game's menu doesn't have any indicator of your progress, but I feel like I missed some things before a story branch. I got through the part with (spoilers encoded in ROT-13) gur vasvavgr ubyr gung vf abg npghnyyl vasvavgr, naq gur cneg jvgu gur ohpxrg zhfrhz va gur Fgnayrl Cnenoyr Gjb. Without spoiling new things, could someone help me understand how close I am to the end?

I started playing DA Veilguard. I had been playing Cyberpunk 2077 for about a year, restarted several times and never got to Act 3. I ended up with a heavily modded game and I relaly enjoy almost everything about it, but I have some personal life events that make impending doom seem like not so much fun. I know I will go back to it, but I really needed a break.

I've played all the Dragon Age Games, and while I find them pretty inferior to any of the CDProjekt games, I've been entertained enough. I know most people we unthrilled with DA Inquisition, but I really enjoyed the characters and the story, though there were too many long stretches of boring and fetch quests. I find the pacing in Veilguard much better, but the characters more generic so far, anyway. It is nice to hear some of my old favorite actors (Claudia Black, Michelle Gomez especially) and the female protagonist voice actor is quite good, I think. Some of the other actors seemed really not so good, at least at the beginning, but either they have improved or I've just gotten used to it. The story is not so interesting, at least yet, but it is mostly not annoying and entertaining enough. I feel like it is impossible to forget for a moment that it is a game, which was also a problem I had with Balder's Gate 3. I like to be able to lose myself in the story and scenery more. Overall I'd give it a B. Glad I got it on sale.

Currently six hours into Tales of Graces f Remastered (at the part where you go into Wallbridge) and I think I like it?

My favorite characters so far are definitely Pascal, Sophie and Richard, while I hate Hubert and how cold he's become in adulthood. But what I dislike most about the game is the clunky combat controls. Combat feels like it's one step removed from a button masher because of how precise some of the A and B Artes feel to execute, how quickly your stamina meter goes down, and how you'll almost never be able to exploit weaknesses unless you see a weakness to certain Artes. I also don't think that having to change titles once every few battles is the best way to introduce stat progression.

Still undecided on whether to quit Old School RuneScape, given the recent survey where they've proposed some deeply unpopular membership tier changes. Think things such as introducing lower tiers of membership containing ads, or mobile-only support, while the higher tiers costing about $10 - $20 per month higher are promising things like "complimentary bonds", "priority customer support", or an actual account recovery service. I am near the end Leagues V and likely won't have enough time to make huge progress.

I also picked up Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen recently, because I heard it was a game that could scratch the old school EverQuest itch, and to say I'm unimpressed is an understatement. The game has no minimap or world map whatsoever, making you wholly reliant on reading quest text and using a compass, which would be good if NPCs gave you easily understandable directions. On top of this, there is no level indicator whatsoever for enemy mobs, so you don't know how powerful your adversaries are. I legitimately got 4-shotted by a fucking rat near the docks in the spawn town.

My wife took our kids out for a few hours, and that was the first time I've had to play games in a long while. I thought about playing Kingdom Come Deliverance which I was kindly given in the Christmas/holiday games giveaway, but wasn't sure when I'd get the time to play again, so have kept that shelved until I feel like I can play a good amount.

I booted up Factorio for the first time after getting gifted Space Age by my manager at work. A couple of hours disappeared into some early game spaghetti. I realized I build a smelting column with Medium power poles in mind and now need to set up another one since I don't have access to steel yet. That game is amazing and every time I play I have to set a timer since I will end up playing way too long if I don't (my friend and I had a free weekend in college and played for 17 hours straight).

Dead State: Reanimated - this is a decade old single player turn based strategy game with some base managment and rpg elements.

I really like the premise of managing your base during zombie apocalypse while going out scavenging with a party and the base execution of it.

Unfortunately there are technical problems that really make the game less than it could have been. Extra slow combat, especially on larger maps, randomly stacking or non-stacking items, jankiness omong some.

As far as I am aware there aren't other games that do it without some combination of extra grimdark or the base premise of the game being that it would have been better in universe if you did not play it. I am glad to oblige this and I am only too happy if I catch it soon enough.

There also seems a new release Urban Strife from different developer that is taking its inspiration from it but I am witholding judgement and possible purchase until it is out of early access.

Just finished Plague Tale: Innocence. The game gets fairly good reviews overall, I but found it quite disappointing.

The story (which I expected to be quite strong in a game like that) is wafer-thin and very short. I'm not a particularly fast gamer, and I finished the game in just over 10 hours.

The gameplay (especially the first half/ three quarters) is very linear, not innovative, and not very diverse. It's basically 'go to area with guards/rats' , 'find way to get past guards/rats' , 'go to next area'. The equipment you need to get past the enemy is conveniently always in reach. Perhaps there is more than one way to solve these little 'puzzles', but there is always one extremely straightforward approach that makes them unchallenging. Yes, the rats are a fun gimmick, but after a couple of areas they are just another obstacle.

It changes a bit in the last part of the game, which I enjoyed more, but it doesn't make up for the whole game.

My Odin 2 Mini* should arrive this week, so I'll be mostly playing the "installing emulators" game.

*) Was between that or a Retroid Pocket 2, and frankly the better button layout and CPU won.

After a furious Guild Wars 2 flurry of being buried in the character creation slider mines last week, we're getting our new doll force up to speed so they can take their places as proper characters. They get to skip to level 60 (thanks to our six-year-old account), and it looks like bonus XP from leveling-oriented new character achievements makes playing them to about 76 pretty breezy, then we have a stockpile of level skips to draw on to hit the cap at 80. We could really just skip directly from 60 to 80, but we do just enjoy playing, so might as well save that resource a little, since it has other uses, and tool around a bit remembering what classes play like without their elite specialization options.

Team new revenant has already become team vindicator and taken up a holding pattern at the Tequatl world boss until they map complete that zone, and team new necro is about to become team harbinger and get released into the wild. The two mesmer-engineer duos will be next to level, and then team hot guardian gets their chance. Have a skin we've been meaning to unlock for my guardian to go get, too.

Would be further along but I lost a chunk of time yesterday debating with someone on Steam vehemently opposed to Steam Input layers. Kinda nice to see someone actually dedicatedly interested in Steam Input configuration (Valve certainly isn't), but sadly they were clearly just there for toxicity and to construct dismissive insults, rather than understand the value layers can bring to games and why Valve needs to make them less buggy. Shouldn't have wasted time on them, even if I wish people would see Steam Input a little more. Tsk, Tsk.

I’ve had Disco Elysium in my library for a while and only just decided to give it a try. I genuinely wanted to like it, but I’ve found the experience far from enjoyable. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what doesn’t work for me, but I’ve realized it’s actually leaving me frustrated. To me, it feels less like a game and more like an endless loop of conversations with writing for edgy teens but doesn’t resonate with me. It seems to lack substance or direction needed to engage my curiosity. The story doesn’t feel as though it’s building toward anything meaningful and there's no gameplay to make up for it.

Ultimately, it reminds me of the fan service one might find in a Marvel movies but with callbacks to and mentions of socioeconomics.

I think my main issue is that I struggle to enjoy these ‘vibe’-focused games and movies, and this one seems to lean heavily on that kind of experience.

I still haven't gone back to Dragon Age: The Veilguard, I'm kind of waiting for when I have a free weekend and am not very stressed out so that I can pay attention. I have been playing some other games, though.

I booted up Super Mario Odyssey again. I got it when it first came out and just never got around to beating it. It's so much dumb fun. I am loving it and I like how pick up and play it is. I was gone from it for 7 years, but it felt like I was gone for 7 days. What can I say, it's a 3D Mario game, but a very good one. I'll try to finish this one up in the next few weeks.

And then wouldn't you know it, after about 2 months I booted up Destiny 2 again and am having fun. I wrapped up the Revenant story and I'm glad I took a few months off. The story was the first one where I basically skipped through the dialogue and just finished it off. I liked the new locations (like the last city location and alchemy lab) and exotic mission, but both the story and execution were just so bad, with a bunch of bugs over the last couple months. That said, a two week event started today leading up to the next season, Heresy, which I'm fairly excited for. It's a story and locale I'll be more interested in, a new dungeon, and some new additions to the arc subclass, which is nice because I've been maining arc lately after spending hundreds of hours on solar and strand, lol. It's pretty clear at this point that Destiny 2 will always be a forever game for me. I may not play it weekly or even monthly, but I will be playing this shit until it shuts off, there's just nothing else like it.

I also booted up Dark Souls 3 for the first time since it came out. I'm a huge Dark Souls/Elden Ring fan and while I've played DS1 maybe 10 times over, I've only played DS3 just the once. I forgot how brutally hard the early game is, even for an experienced player. I was struggling hard and am stuck on the stupid tree boss, lol. Playing through the game is a bit weird, because I don't actually remember what to do, but the gameplay of course is second nature to me, and I still have vague recollections of some of the game (like I knew about the troll that throws down spears in the second area). I'll probably keep plugging away at it. Souls games are a bit of a comfort food for me.

More Project Zomboid. This time, I went Sandbox mode, set it up somewhat "Builder" style, and made a ridiculously overpowered (100 added trait points and the More Traits mod) to make a reasonable facsimile of John Rambo, PTSD and all.

I think I may be starting to lose interest after spending over 100 hours on it the past few weeks.

I keep running into places where the game's systems violate the principle of least surprise. For instance:

• I can't seem to get water into a cooking pot to sterilize it (mod conflict?)
• crossbow mod where the bolts have an absurdly short range
• damn, Rambo gets hungry a lot and needs to eat all of the time. I like the simulation aspect but I didn't sign up to play The Sims (so also avoid the Lifestyle: Hobbies mod as it requires using the toilet!)
• farming is broken in b42
• plumbing is broken in b42 (mod supposedly fixes this but I haven't had luck yet)
• b41 seems unplayable for me. At modestly high resolutions I can't read the UI at all. b41 is just missing too many QoL updates that are in b42.
• The game becomes Diablo inventory management hell. I seem to need so many of the tools so often that John Rambo is often carrying his whole workshop on his back. Carrying other things means overburdened all of the time.

Again, I get it's simulation. But ir's simulating so very much that... ugh.

I realize that I could override some of these systems. I may have to try it. I've oddly had some reservations—maybe because I'm dubious of how much depth the game has without these limitations. Enabling cheats on a game is often a quick way for me to become completely jaded with a game. What's the point without challenge?

I dropped Forspoken after trying really hard to like it. I started Sonic Frontiers right afterwards, which is a lateral move in a lot of ways.

Weirdly though, I'm finding Sonic pretty fun. There are a ton of weird, bad design decisions, but the core of "zip around, go fast, do some platforming" totally works. The combat is surprisingly good too. There's more attacks than before, so you're actually chaining together combos in a way that Sonic (afaik) hasn't done before.

It'll probably cap out for me at a 3⭐/4 because of the downsides, but I'm having a good time with it. Makes for some good mindless fun.

∆V: Rings of Saturn: I 've been thinking about this game for a minute and played it a few months ago. I picked it back up looking for something to focus on and it's kind of captivating. You mine rocks from Saturn's rings, and downside quests, selling resources between "ring dives," and it's an open-ended asteroid mining game. I'm looking to get the hang of its progression, but it's good for fifteen minutes rounds.

Balatro: I'm working through the decks and am stuck on Yellow. I got to the 8th blind but choked on a blind where I had to play five cards, which broke my build. I'll keep going, it's fun to let the game suck me in for a couple hours.