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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.
Last week I did something that it took me 27 years to do; finally beat Half-Life, legitimately.
Half-Life has been apart of my life since I was 14 and I've played it numerous times, always getting to Xen, making a half-hearted attempt at it and then simply jumping to the final boss with the console and then noclipping into his head to finish him off.
Something weird crawled-up my butt and I decided I would play it through, start to finish on my Steam Deck and well, I did it. It plays pretty great on the Deck and was good practice for me to get better and feel less frustrated playing FPS games on my Deck, which usually happens almost immediately and I begin longing for a Keyboard and Mouse. At any rate, it feels very dated at this point, both in terms of graphics and gameplay, but in spite of that, I still had fun and kept itching to play more and more of it. Xen wasn't even all that bad; aside from the initial platforming, it's generally not too bad and it goes very, very quick. The only real frustration I felt with Xen was the final boss, who wouldn't stop teleporting me; I thought I might just fall back on my old strategy and do noclip, but I discovered that he Hive Hand will dissipate the portals and from there, it became easy peasy. I was also a bit shocked that the campaign was only 8-hours, it always felt much longer.
So now, I've started Black Mesa, which I think is a generally pretty good update to the game. I love how the areas are typically more fleshed out--disappointed with On a Rail though. It's my favorite set of levels in the original and it's heavily cut back here--NPCs are more varied and the fights are quite a bit more challenging. Vortegaunts are no longer a joke and Marines can be a downright pain in the ass given how many of them there can be in an area. I loved how the dam is Surface Tension feels like a proper dam; the space seems absolutely enormous and so much less scaled back as it does in the original game. At this point, I'm through the Lamba Complex mostly and making my way towards the jump to Xen and I'm very curious to see what the developers have done there.
I'm also steadily making progress on Advance Wars: Dual Strike, after having played Advance Wars 2 either last year or in 2023. It's still a pretty great game and there are just so many more units compared to the first or even the second game. I suppose I don't have much to say about it, but I intend to start Days of Ruin afterwards and see how it holds-up. It was my first AW game back when it first released and I really didn't care for or understand it at the time, but we can see that's changed.
And my one amusing anecdote about Dual Strike is that so far, I've played it on 4 different systems. I started out playing it on my RG405, but got annoyed switching between screens, even though I rarely, if ever actually look at any of the information on the top screen, then switched to my DSi, then my DSi XL, back to my DSi (which I just broke by being an overconfident idiot) and now on to my N3DS. Maybe not terribly amusing, I just find it interesting that we have so many choices as to how we can play our games these days. I've even considered transferring my save over to my tablet, but I don't have a telescopic gamepad that would fit so I could play it in portrait mode there.
Oh man, Black Mess's Xen is a ride. They fully remade it in their own vision. It's now more along the lines of what was originally intended but cut back for time cause they had to release the game or go bankrupt. I believe Gabe Newell said that Xen was one of his few regrets in his career.
I did see that mentioned in the recent post here on Tildes, cataloguing the history of Half-Life. That's actually what prompted this playthrough, as it's been...probably well over a decade since I last played it, probably even more.
I am definitely looking forward to getting to Xen with Black Mesa. My wife played through it many years ago while it was still in early access and it was largely complete up until Xen, so I'm excited.
Alright, I just finished Black Mesa and I don't want to wait until next week to make a post about it.
Xen was initially, very cool, I loved what I was seeing and it was a good time. But then it went on... And on... And on...
By Interloper, I was pretty all done with it. I really loved seeing the Vortigaunts, their village and their work in the factory. I loved that they weren't hostile until mind controlled, it really lines up with the Half-Life 2 story. But again, it just keeps going. Constant fights after fights, constant, tedious puzzles that end up being the exact same thing in three different rooms.
I finally made it to Nihilanth and made it 90% of the way through the fight before I got tired of saving and loading and ended up turning on God Mode. Maybe I should have stuck it out because Nihilanth only took a couple more hits before going down, but by the time I got to him, I was already frustrated and annoyed with how things were dragging, which continued on with the fight. Nihilanth had these constant phase changes and it all just felt like this attritional flight.
I'm sorry to say that it all left a sour taste in my mouth and kind of spoiled what is otherwise a pretty exceptional experience. Everything leading up to Xen was fantastic and the first 1/3rd of Xen is also really great, so 90% of the game is great, but just that last 2/3rds is very long and tedious.
An Advance Wars mention in this day and age is a pleasant surprise. Dual Strike was my first AW game and I got nostalgic over it years after beating it on my DS that I downloaded an emulator on my phone to beat it again, so I think that counts as playing it on a different system, haha. Days of Ruin is definitely a different vibe from the original AW games but it still has that Intelligent Systems touch that makes it feel great to play.
Yup, I've done the same! I went back to Dual Strike originally about 10 years ago and played it via Drastic on my phone. I could swear that I beat it back then, but I honestly don't remember a lot of the game, so maybe I didn't. Though my memory is very poor, so that's no indicator.
I'm not looking terribly forward to DoR, just because of the more serious story. I like how silly everything is in the early series; I may just end up going back and starting the original over again or maybe even seeing if I can get RebootCamp running via emulation.
You might enjoy this writeup of Half Life which I read recently. Does a good job capturing everything Half Life did right at the time
Yup! That's exactly what prompted this playthrough. I finished reading it last Sunday afternoon and then started Half-Life that night. Funny that it took me less than a week to get through it (think I finished it maybe Thursday or Friday?), as I'm typically very damn slow when it comes to playing through stuff.
There's a lot of muscle memory there though, so I blitzed through a lot of it.
I'm glad I found the "something weird" that "crawled up your butt" haha
Our town's annual vintage video game convention was held this weekend. We have a local vintage game store in town. I feel incredibly lucky that I can think of an old video game/system and actually go buy a tested and warrantied copy.
The convention is small but much larger than you might expect for some nerds meeting up in a defunct JC Pennys. There are bands, cosplay competition, fighting game competitions, plent of booths for hardware/physical media swapping, artists, etc. But my favorite part is always the "retro museum" where you can play the majority of old consoles and early computer hardware.
A couple standouts:
I ended up getting a good deal on a GBA. I've been looking for one of the transpareny blue models as mine was lent out and never returned years ago. Happy to report my Final Fantasy Tactic Advanced save still exists!
What I've been playing at home:
Monster Hunter Wilds has been out for about.... 60 hours or something? and I have 30 hours in it.
Definitely have some issues with the frames, but I've been hovering around 50 this whole time on 1440p, so not terrible. Definitely had some weird visual glitches as well, but god it's such a fun game.
I switched from Normal Gunlance to WideLance and it's feeling so smooth and like a completely different weapon after over 500 hours of Normal Gunlance in World and Rise. The monsters are all fun to fight, and you feel so powerful when you're hunting. I'm actually having to do work today so I'm just counting down the hours till I can log on again.
I definitely have some gripes about the story, but it's not too too bad and there are some really epic feeling moments in there for sure. The multiplayer throughout the story is also a bit tedious to get into, but definitely not as bad as in World. I actually got to play with @immaterial as well and it's been pretty smooth as well!!
Mind sharing your specs? I'm typically getting anywhere between 40-60fps on 1440p with upscaling but without frame gen, but FPS has a tendency to tank hard in any of the hub areas. I'm running a 3070, Ryzen 5600x, and 32gb of RAM. I'm using FSR3 instead of DLSS since that lets me turn on frame generation to get 70-80 frames on average so the game doesn't give me a headache after a while but I wish I didn't have to.
I've been using Switch Axe for most of my hunts despite being a Heavy Bowgun main in World since it's just more fun to smack monsters with a giant transforming exploding sword sometimes and the new sword counter on it is a godsend, I can pretend I'm playing longsword and it seriously makes up for the huge mobility downside of sword mode.
I'm pretty much up one step on everything that you listed. 5800x, 3080, 32Gb Ram! I use DLSS though but I don't think frame gen is really worth from what I can tell. I also have some issues with hub areas but very rarely go under 30. I know there were some settings that some people were messing with in the ini file that was going around on the subreddit, but I think a bunch of those were placebo fixes.
I tried switch axe last night actually! I think Sword and Shield is actually a bit more fun though, would recommend especially with Perfect Guard spamming. I usually run a Gunlance/Hunting Horn combo though so it's just a nice change of pace for me.
Yeah the "typo" somebody found in the config.ini is definitely a placebo, turns out that typo is just how that variable's named and "fixing" it causes that config setting to switch to whatever the default is. Apparently the game also has TWO layers of anti-tamper software, Denuvo and Capcom's in-house one, so this might just be scapegoating but I'm pretty sure those aren't helping the performance any.
I've dabbled a bit with Gunlance and I'll probably have a build for that once I get deeper into high-rank. SnS also looks pretty cool now but I am rather biased towards weapons that explode.
Yeah part of me is wondering how much Denuvo is affecting the performance, I remember it's historically been not great for performance. Apparently my friend tried out the fix and he mentioned it helped a bit but I'm not too sure how much I believe that lol.
If you like explosions Gunlance is Funlance!! I've really been enjoying Widelance, but Normal Gunlance you get more booms per combo for sure. It's so much more mobile nowadays too which is really fun while maintaining all the "I'm a tank" feeling we've had in World.
I'm normally a swaxe main, and I embarrasingly only found out about the sword mode counter after finishing the main story.
The weapon felt good to me already, but with the sword counter? Holy moly. Some people are going to go crazy with it.
I enjoyed those hunts! Might as well put my thoughts here too!
It's definitely a few huge leaps forward in the series, but also a few disappointing steps backwards. The good news is that the core gameplay loop feels as good as it's ever been in a Monter Hunter game (not that it matters, but I've played just about every monster hunter game excluding frontier). The feel of the weapons I've tried are great.
I absolutely love the "seamless" aspect of it, but it still is flawed to me. To get into the world with a group, you have to join an Environment Link. This allows you to hunt in the seamless world, BUT if you want to do a specific quest (like say a side mission), you have to disband the link and then post the quest. The implementation just feels very incongruous, which is the opposite of what they should be aiming for.
A lot of complaints about "difficulty", which I agree with (I definitely didn't cart with pheonix though, I swear). Though for me the key point on difficulty is the monster health pools - some of them are simply too low, to the point I thought it must be a bug. Me and a friend cleared a
Monster spoiler
Frenzied Yian Kut KuI hope the team can do some magic on the optimization of the game, so some of my friends who have (relatively) older hardware can join too.
Really enjoyed the couple of hunts we did this weekend + the ones that you literally just logged off of! Looking forwards to more hunts in the future!
I'm torn. I want to play but absolutely do not want to reward Capcom with launching a terribly optimized game.. twice in a row.
But then Steam shows almost a million and a half players so what's the point?
It turns out the game is enjoyable for everyone that has no graphical or frame rate issues, if a bit easy to get through, so I'm not worried that I'll enjoy the game.
Sorry, I didn't actually respond to your post much other than latch onto it because it's yet another positive review.
It's not too dificult but I also have a bunch of hours in MHWorld and MHRise, so ymmv!
Yeah it's a bit disappointing that it's unoptimized. The core gameplay is incredibly fun though! Hitting monsters is really satisfying and the weapons I've tried out have all been really fun.
Did they fix the thing from the Wilds beta where the monster would run away 15 times in a single hunt? By the time I got in the groove the thing ran, every time, sometimes even after just one or two hits. It made me hesitant to even play it early in the first place.
Yup, the monsters stay for a lot longer now. I actually don't think I've seen that too much though when I ran the beta, even managed to kill Arkveld on their shorter timer! But yeah I do think they specifically said that that was fixed in the main game.
The game also ran miles better during the network and beta tests so I have to see it to believe it. Which in this case, your words are sufficient proof, theirs are not.
That actually is surprising to me, I think I actually have an average of 10 frames more on the game than I did during the beta, if it ran nicely during the beta tests for you then I think you'll be fine performance wise.
I should be fine, my system is beefier than the people presenting problems.
What I've seen is that it bottlenecks rather hard on VRAM and not as much on CPU or other metrics. With a 4080 I should run 1440p without much trouble but I worry about 4k showing that same bad frame timing you see on lower end cards.
My gripe is more with Capcom releasing something so jarringly unoptimized that it feels phoned in and then asking 80 dollars for it.
How would you compare it to World and Rise? I haven't kept up with it much but any key differences/improvements/drawbacks?
I think the easiest way to describe it is World++. The settings and world itself are bigger and more dynamic, the weapons are smoother and have extra things to them to learn without being completely unfamiliar. Because of wirebugs I'd say Rise weapons felt way different. I'd say if you liked World, it's a perfect sequel.
I played the first six hours of kcd2 and I find it a really special game. Somehow the systems in the game are so implicit or entwined with the gameplay and the story, that the immersion is unlike any other game I have ever played. I can’t help but feel/hope/believe that other rpgs will learn from this game, and I’m excited to see where that will take us.
The strange thing with kcd2 is how some things are totally effortless: like you don’t have to engage too much with levels, because the game just automatically levels you up in the things you actually do in game. Swordfight a lot? Swordfighting levels up. Craft a lot of potions? Alchemy levels up. It feels a bit like Skyrim: I can just do stuff and roleplay without explicitly telling the game which kind of character I would like to be. The game just takes that from the way I play.
On the other hand, the game requires a lot of effort when executing tasks in the game. Like when you’re brewing a potion, you’re not just clicking a potion in a menu. I open a book, ready my ingredients, lower the cooking pot, grind herbs, …. All those small steps feel really meaningful. And I have to execute them with care to successfully brew a potion. The more careful i am, the better my potion is.
Overall, I guess the developers tried to build a game that minimizes the time you spend interfacing with menus. It reminds me of the last Indiana jones game, where you literally need to look down at a paper map to find out where to go. I love that evolution and can’t wait to see and play more of those games.
Yeah, KCD 2 really seems to answer people who want a more in depth/tight roleplaying experience in their rpg. Absolutely love the game and all the systems, it's so immersive. Also, the levelling up I think is better than Skyrim because the perk points you earn are specific to the skill you levelled up.
They are going to easily surpass Bethesda as my favorite RPG maker as they kept most of what I love about Bethesda games save some nitpicks (that I liked but Warhorse has done a good enough job I can sacrifice them.. basically I did like that you could interact with items besides just putting htem in their inventory and dropping them and I like making my own character. At least though items actually each have their own model and look like items in the world even if you drop them after picking them up). But they also excelled in stuff I really wish bethesda would do better (your choices matter more to the story, the story is so much better, it's very good writing).
Plus I love that crafting is more than just put two items together, done. They went a long way to actually make you feel like you are actually crafting the item. I know some people find that tedious but I love it (and find it tedious sometimes too lol but I'd not do without it. They should just do what they did with KCD 1. Have a perk later in the game that allows you to automake things for when you just don't want to interact with it. But I'll take not having that option over them not trying to make you actually craft the item).
I can't wait to play this one when I can finally afford it. I played KCD originally in 2020 when Epic gave it away and it has become easily one of my favorite games (if not my favorite) of all time and it's exactly for the reasons you mention.
I loved the fact that I could be out in the world, see a couple ingredients for a potion I really needed, grab them and then head back to brew it. Brewing it, due to my terrible memory, means I have to look back repeatedly at the recipe, checking back and forth between what I'm doing and what I need to do, it feels exactly how I cook for real, which is constantly looking at my recipe on my phone for the next steps.
It sounds like it would be tedious, but it just ends-up immersing me so much in the world that I want to live there. I really should go back to the first game and do some random quests, especially A Woman's Lot and finish building Pribyslavitz (not sure I got that right). I finished the story ages ago at this point, but I do love just wandering around, doing stuff, playing dice and just being Henry.
"Jesus Christ be praised!"
Thanks for the writeup! Have you played Red Dead Redemption 2? A lot of what you're describing sounds like RDR2 with regards to the attention to detail and crafting and whatnot. Haven't played KCD2 yet but I feel maybe this is the start of (some) rpg games being more immersive and interactive when it comes to side activities and world-building, rather than just menus and simple button presses for everything that isn't combat.
And that leveling system sounds pretty cool too. You mentioned Skyrim and I was actually thinking of Oblivion as I read your description of it. Things just level up as you use them. Do you know if KCD2 has enemy scaling? That was typically a big complaint of Oblivion, that if you leveled the wrong skills you'd end up pretty underpowered as the enemies around you scaled to your level. Like if you've significantly improved your alchemy or acrobatics skill, that's not gonna help you much in combat against the now-tougher foes.
I have played both and yes, it does have a lot of RDR 2 vibes to it. But in an RPG game. It does immersion as well as RDR 2 (aside from horse riding which the first one I thought felt almost as good as RDR2's horse riding but they ruined in it KCD 2 :( ).
Tag: too much running, very biased towards the more athletically inclined, also they'll remain nameless but certain people definitely cheat and claim they tagged you when they absolutely did not
See, now my nephew doesn't cheat at tag, it's just that when I tag him he explains to me why my tag was invalid. Apparently tagging someone while standing on carpet doesn't count because that type of flooring, of course, is lava and I shouldn't be standing on it, so I'm still it. I guess it's my own fault for being ignorant of the rules.
Fans of the genre will say it's totally valid game design that you need to grind endurance levels for 80 hours before you can enjoy the main game
I just don't get it. I liked it when I was newer to gaming in general but these days? Nah. I'm here for the story. And the plot is all over the place.
I've not had a lot of time lately and I saw someone mention a bite sized FPS called Hole.
Its a mix of Japanese absurdisim with Lynchian elements, all in an extraction shooter wrapper. Like you start the game in a storm drain. You pick up a pistol. Get a tutorial on how to reload, chaber a round and clear jams. You then lean that your extraction point is a magical floating microwave stuffed with potatoes that opens a portal in the ground when the timer runs out. And then you are dropped into some incredibly brutal gunplay set in liminal mazes.
The game was clearly ment to be played in small chunks. It's PvEvE where you are caught in the middle of a war between the red, blue and yellow teams. Maps start completely abandoned with difficulty ramping up with time. After 30 sec theres a few pistol goons, and within minutes you are surrounded by gunfights. Around lv.5 things get weird and you're put up against demons and juggernauts where you are expected to fail and get frustrated.
And just as I was thinking I should quit, it hit me. There's no harm in loosing. Like it sucks to see 5k currency lost, but you don't loose objective progress, ammo is unlimited and it takes about 20 min to earn that much back. And so you go nuts and the game really shines. You're going towards the gun fight sounds. You pick up the insane map layouts and work with it. You recognize the different chatter sounds for each enemy type and plan accordingly. And next thing you know, you're racking up wins and finishing all the missions the faceless nurse gives you.
And then you unlock the next map. You hit a skill cliff. And you get to do it all over again.
Its not a perfect game, but I really like it. I just don't know who to recommend it to. Extraction Shooters have their whole niche and audience. Groundered tactical shooters have everything from Ready or Not to R6. It's not horror or proper power fantasy. No idea who would want to play this.
Well, you can recommend it to me because it’s already on my wishlist and I’m just waiting for a spare weekend to play it. I’m looking forward to it!
Tokyo Xtreme Racer, Dave the Diver, Deep Rock Galactic, Hotdogs, Horseshoe, and Hand Grenades.
TXR - I've talked about before, it's my racing game of 2025 right now. Even if I can only play for a few minutes, the music, the cars, everything works for me.
Dave the Diver - I've been dropping in and out of this one lately thanks to renewed interest from the family - I'm think I'm getting over the hurdle with it and I think the "less button mashing" option improves the game. Just wish the aiming/weapon ready thing was smoother... Maybe it'll be an upgrade later.
DRG - 7th anniversary is on now. Crazy to think it's 7 years old. Still fun, if a bit more chaotic these days.
H3VR - Still my go to VR game of choice. Did some cleaning which allowed me to get some VR gaming in and the take and hold mode is always one of the best "quick" VR experiences, at least if you're a bit of a gun nut. If you have a headset, it gets one of my highest recommendations.
Glad to hear you're liking TXR, I'm very interested in playing at launch.
Finished Jedi Survivor over the weekend. I was rather disappointed in it, because I enjoyed the first one quite a bit and it didn't hold up to my expectations.
The story was weak. Ironically the first game felt more like a "Survivor" storyline with being hunted by the Inquisitors and everything. But the whole Tanalorr plot, the betrayal plot, was very meh on personally.
I found the level design to be atrocious. It's clear they wanted to use more verticality compared to the first one but they did it very poorly. It was so confusing to figure out where the hell you were and where you had to go next, and so many times you'd get turned around and disoriented. I'm usually very good with navigation/direction but somehow they made it so confusing I had trouble so many times to reorient myself.
Something which should be SO easy with a 3D holographic map. The level design in FO was much better.
I also found it way too long/big of a game. There was just too much open world crap in it for what it was. I think if the story was cut down by like 1/3rd maybe and the overall largeness of the maps/open world stuff was halved it would've been so much better.
It was just way too much junk and running around these poorly designed levels to find chests and loot was a slog and a grind that was not fun. Open world games, especially AAA games these days are so bloated just to pad the playtime and it shows and it sucks.
They need to cut the boring stuff, keep the good stuff and condense it to just the fun mechanics. It feels like they had a bunch of ideas and did all of them rather than picking the best ones and dumping the rest.
And lastly, I hate hate hate how they treat lightsabers. Disney in general doesn't fucking understand lightsabers and it's so infuriating. They treat them like batons instead of swords and it's just terrible. I had this issue with the first game as well but I think it's even worse this time around.
Overall I'd say 7/10, there was some good parts, I like the characters, and I'm interested to see what the story would be for the third game given how this one ended. But overall very meh.
I started Jedi Survivor a while ago, and yeah, I bounced off it pretty fast for all of the same reasons. I don't recall getting lost in Fallen Order once, but in Survivor I'm constantly getting lost and struggling to interpret the map.
When I got to my first open-world section on Koboh I was like, "Oh, I'm not going to like this game as much." Soon after, they introduce a bunch of collectibles, a weird gardening minigame, etc... and I could just tell the scope of this game was growing way beyond what I expected or wanted from it.
Initially, the idea of a race to find High Republic ruins and retrace the path to Tanalorr sounded exciting, and seemed to recapture the Indiana Jones inspiration that I felt the first game had. Then they introduce the 'betrayal' plot that you mentioned, and yeah, my interest began to wane even more.
Overall, though, the main thing that bounced me off has totally been the level design. It's just so much more of a slog to get anywhere and do anything and have any fun. I felt like the first game had a great balance: there was plenty of exploration, traversal, but also excitement, action, and set pieces. I never felt like the game was too linear or railroaded. Whereas this game just feels daunting and sprawling.
A shame. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to sit back down and try to get through it soon, maybe during my summer break, but right now it's just not a game that's fun to play in one-to-two hour sittings.
Agreed with everything you said. FO had a great balance. Yeah I had to force myself to get through it. Though if you got to the betrayal part, you're pretty near the end of the game. If you only want to best it you could easily do that in one more session. You only have like 2 or 3 main objectives left and not much exploration left either (like some of those objectives taking you to new massive areas to get through i mean).
I really hope the third game takes more in line with FO than Survivor.
Are we maybe talking about different things? The 'betrayal' I'm talking about is....
Spoilers?
The reveal that Dagan Gera is actually a bad guy, when you revive him from his stasis tank. I wasn't sure how spoiler-y that reveal was, so I wanted to keep it vague.If I remember correctly, the last time I played I was on Jedha, which still felt pretty early on in the game. I'd be surprised if I was actually that far into the game!
Oh I see. My bad, yeah you are maybe 1/3rd through the game then. I was referring to something else.
No worries! Now I'm intrigued by what awaits me!
Spoilers related to the above comment
I thought Dagan Gera's switch was pretty amusing because Cal is chatting with him and Dagan's just casually taking apart his saber and turning the crystal red right in front of him.
Proverbs
I picked this up on the recommendation of @vicvision and @Requirement back in our most recent Hidden Gems topic
It’s kind of like minesweeper but simpler. Also, the board is genuinely gigantic: 50,000+ squares.
They’re broken into different regions, and as you solve each region, the squares get colored in: individual pixels as part of the overall larger artwork. You also get a little “proverb” — little idiomatic turns of phrase — for some of them.
I’m about 13 hours into the game, and I’m about 40% done. I will finish out the game 100%.
Is it fun? No.
Is it exciting? No.
Does it unfold with cool new mechanics or experiences over time? No. Your first hour in the game will be practically identical to your fifteenth hour.
Are these bad things? Not at all.
Like many of us right now, I’ve been… let’s call it “overstimulated.” There’s a lot going on. A lot to process and think about. A lot of big feelings and stresses.
Proverbs has been a way to step away from that. It’s calm, and easygoing. Low-stakes. There’s no time limit nor punishment for errors. There’s also no guessing. There’s a hint button you can use at any time to get yourself unstuck.
What makes it compelling, and what has kept me playing for a dozen hours so far, is that it’s filling a need that’s completely unrelated to the game for me. The basic rule of the game is so simple that I can fill squares almost automatically without thought, but it also requires just enough attention and processing that my brain doesn’t wander down any unrelated roads. I get to turn off my thinking.
I can get into a very comfortable flow state playing the game that’s almost meditative. When I play for an hour, it doesn’t feel like an hour. It feels immeasurable. I am unaware of the passage of time. It feels like I’m getting a break from, well, everything during that time.
I don’t want to overhype this game like it’s some amazing therapeutic tool or something. I can see a lot of people finding it too simple or outright boring. But for me, it’s hitting right. I disappear into it for an hour or two after a day at work or on the weekend, and the headspace I’m in while I’m fluidly filling boxes is one that’s blessedly separate from everything else going on right now.
I'm so glad that I was a part of your discovering Proverbs! You do a great job summing up so much of what I find so pleasing about the game. It is a zen experience just filling in the squares, listening to music. With all that's going on in the world, I really need an activity like this.
If you finish Proverbs, the creator released an earlier game Mega Mosaic and 2024 Mosaic Retrospective, so there's a good amount of mosaic-ing to do!
This is a great explanation, thanks for putting the feeling into words! I usually have a game like this going in the background at any given time, though I'll usually take turns either reaching that flow state you described or using it as a sort of fidget/busy toy to play with while I listen to news or a podcast or watch something on my second monitor.
My last game like this was Everyday Genius and it was absolutely gigantic, I didn't finish it as much as just lost interest. I'll likely return to it one day, I'm still not close to getting all achievements and had once deluded myself into thinking I'd eventually do it, maybe if I can ever afford to retire lol.
After getting 100% on Proverbs I looked for something else to fill that void and landed on World of Art. The puzzles are all classical masterpiece paintings and the soundtrack is classical music. The full bundle is almost $50 but I got it during the last Steam sale for around $10. I'm enjoying it.
Do we share a brain? We might share a brain. I have dozens of hours in Everyday Genius as well!
Probably 75% of my gaming time is spent playing relatively mindless, casual stuff as background for audiobooks. “Fidgets,” as you said, is a good way to describe them.
You can't just come in here with more suggestions like I'm not going to end up sinking a few hundred hours into them.
Lol well I hope you enjoy that time at least. As I mentioned World of Art gets very cheap on sale so I'd wait for that one. Everyday Genius is an old title and always cheap.
Bonus points for World of Art for having an adult only Nudity DLC that lets me feel like a deviant while actually just serving tasteful centuries-old nudes. This ain't your grandson's furry or brony puzzle game hah
This week I returned to Terra Invicta after about 2 years when I saw my friend had picked it up.
It's been through quite a lot of small changes and it feels pretty different.
I really like this game but man it's hard. There's a mountain of details to understand and they all interlink.
I've yet to win and I kinda wana try to do it at least once, but I feel like I might need to like actually try if I want to do it.
Looking forward to taking over China and building a massive rocket to escape Earth, I hope I can pull it off!
Guessing based on your post that you haven't engaged with the revamped space combat (fighters) yet? I finished my last playthrough just before that patch dropped and have been curious to hear how it impacts that aspect of the game--best of luck with Project Exodus, they're next on my to-play list!
You're correct yeah! I've only got as far as launching into space. But I can see there is a heap of balance changes and little tweaks. It's interesting to see the AI actually do stuff on Earth now. In the early days it felt like they were pretty much not there until they got a space base before you or something.
I've been playing a lot of Avowed. I finished my first playthrough in about a week which is really unheard of for me during the school year. I really like it, but it's not a masterpiece or anything. Personally, I love the feeling of roaming around a gigantic world where I can come across random stuff. Not every game needs to have that, but I think it would've been nice to traverse across the Living Lands without having to travel between regions. The setting is fun and interesting enough to expand to that size, imo. There are interesting themes, but some of the dialogue is, well, lame. The combat is a lot of fun and I love when there are different outcomes based on the choices you have to make. If I could sum it up, I'd say Avowed : Skyrim :: Outer Worlds : New Vegas. I haven't played any of the Pillars of Eternity games, but I like the world enough to check them out.
Thanks for reminding me about that a:b::x:y format. Haven't seen it used in years!
I really like all three of those other games, so Avowed is definitely on my list of games to pick up whenever I have some more time to devote to it. Sad to hear that the dialogue can be lame, as that's usually Obsidian's forte.
It's definitely a dialogue which has a particular voice. I would go in open to it. I have some fuddy duddy, anti-quippiness tendencies, and i find the dialogue vacillates between good, funny, and RPG filler. I'm rewarded when I slow down and pay attention but also just skip through some dialogue.
My wife really loves Morrowind, and wishes that Elder Scrolls had kept some of the weird fantasy vibes. Do you think she'd like Avowed? (She's also a big fan of Skyrim still, if that helps.)
I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I've never played Morrowind. It's been sitting on my console for years, begging me to fulfill my obligation. I'm not an expert on fantasy by any stretch, but as a total normie/casual in the gaming sense, I'd say Avowed has more fantasy vibes than Skyrim and Oblivion. I would highly recommend Avowed to anyone that likes those games. I've seen it catch flak online, but I think that mostly comes from having really high expectations.
Ah, no worries! I'm in the same boat despite my wife's love for it, haha. I think that's enough to give her a good recommendation, though I'll also ask, how are the side-quests and NPCs? She really likes rich, lively worlds with lots of characters to talk to and the like. E.g. she loved Xenoblade Chronicles 2 because of how many great, involved side-quests it had.
Each region has a handful of side quests and a city center with people to talk to. You can go back and forth with different party members and unlock some small dialogue options. It's not a gigantic, living, breathing world but it isn't exactly barebones, either. That's actually my main critique - it's good enough that I wish it was a lot bigger. It's like watching a great 8-episode miniseries and you wish there were 6-8 more episodes.
You should tell your wife to have a look at Dread Delusion. Unfortunately I can't tell you how good it is, because it is still on my wish list. I heard it has a similar vibe to Morrowind. Apparently it's exploration heavy and the combat is on the easy side. According to the Steam reviews the game is great.
I actually did already pick that one up! :D I liked what I've played of it.
Finally making my way throught he Final fantasy 7 remake. Pretty near the end and have enjoyed it. Will be moving to rebirth afterwards.
You're in for a treat, Rebirth (in my opinion) improves on Remake in basically every way. Don't feel pressured to do every single bit of side content while you progress though, I did and it hurt the pacing of the story a bit.
I feel like I saw a lot of negativity around it, so I'm glad to hear something positive! I really liked the first game, and though I haven't spoiled myself at all on Rebirth, I'd definitely seen concerns about its pacing. Glad to hear it might just be from people gorging themselves too much on the side content.
I'm hopeful that it'll get more playable on Steam Deck soon, otherwise I'll have to wait for when I eventually get a PS5... I waited to get my PS4 until after they announced the PS5, haha, so it might be a while!
Though, I should ask, is it relatively quick to replay and do the side-content? I often find myself laser-focusing on completing all the content on my first playthrough because some games are such a slog on repeat playthroughs. But I remember FF7 Remake seemed to have a really player-friendly replay interface, if I recall correctly.
Once you complete the game once, it unlocks chapter select mode just like in Remake so you're able to hop between chapters at will at the difficulty of your choosing to complete content or chapter-specific achievements.
I played FORM, an early PCVR game I got from secret santa, best described as fiddly bits: the experience. Like other such early PCVR games, it's actually surprisingly immersive and well made, with good sound design and visuals that leverage shaders and particle effects rather than high poly models and complex textures. Also like early PCVR games, it's very very short, with about one hour worth of gameplay.
I tried Wisper, purportedly a cozy game in which you explore a world in a quest to find these ghostly entities called Wisps (a bit like the mushi from Mushishi). You have to draw a symbolic representation of each type of wisp in your book, using your mouse or analog stick, and progress through the various continents while helping people/questgivers. It's not a bad premise.
At first I could forgive the flaws in this game as mistakes made by novice developers. The dialogue is of course atrociously written (always the first thing to suffer!) Walking on and climbing over rough terrain, as well as later forms of traversal with only one exception, are very janky and poorly implemented (if you remember how I praised that aspect of Caravan Sandwitch, think the opposite of that). Your protagonist is weaker to water than Altair the Assassin; dip in a toe and you'll immediately perish - and there's water everywhere. There are core design flaws such as the necessity to retread the same paths a lot with an annoyingly slow running speed. Questgiver dialogue doesn't always change when you complete the quest, and it's unclear why some quests require you to return to the questgiver while others don't. Props are poorly placed on sets - if you look closely, you can see they're flying above the terrain, or you can see inside them from the back. The drawing mechanic is also really finnicky and may require several attempts per stroke.
My patience did not however survive the later regions of the game, which are clearly unfinished. Suddenly there's barely any music anymore. It's unclear what you have to do. There are game breaking bugs. In the "final boss" area, a dragon will chase you around in eerie silence while you try to navigate a very large area with dense camera range fog (and there isn't any form of map or minimap) to collect some ink for the final drawing. If you manage to survive this long process, you have a few seconds to wrestle the janky drawing system into submission or the dragon will kill you and force you to redo the whole thing. Urgh.
I paid €10 for this game, which seemed cheap. Right now it's being sold for €7 thanks to a discount. This game is not worth €7. If you are curious, wait until it costs... €2?
I've been playing AI: The Somnium Files, a birthday present. This is a Spike Chunsoft game like Zero Escape and the like. It plays very much like you would expect: There are VN-like scenes with vast quantities of dialogue, investigation scenes in which you mess around with things, and branching timelines affected by your decisions in certain key moments. I'm 12 hours in but I think there's still plenty more to see judging by the timeline flowchart.
You play as a special detective (Date) investigating a series of murders which seem related to people he knows. The murderer removes one eye from their victims, and there was another similar serial murder case in the past with similar traits. Date has amnesia starting from the time of the original serial murder case. He is also missing one eye. Not suspicious at all! In his missing eye socket, resides his partner AI-ball (Aiba), an autonomous robot mind-linked to Date with all kinds of tech-related deus ex machina powers (hack the planet!) Also smartphone features.
The key gameplay concept is tied to the machine that Date's special police department use to, er, invade the dreams of people they arrest, with only the flimsiest of consents at best (fortunately no one's calling their lawyer). In each dream, Aiba has six minutes to mess around with things using dream moon logic, with time only being used when interacting with things or walking around. Each action takes up a fixed amount of seconds but also grants rewards or penalties that apply to subsequent actions. Finding the correct actions removes "mental locks" that allow the dream to progress, hopefully towards finding useful information.
I find the characters in this game less compelling than in Zero Escape in general, although the plot at least seems like less of a timeline spaghetti so far. Still, it's a nice investigation game and it's fun to come up with your own theories and try to solve things before the characters do. I'm also getting better at the moon logic. Since it's a Spike Chunsoft game, I'm expecting more plot twists in the future, too.
Previous
AI: The Somnium Files is one of those games that's been sitting on my Switch for a while. I've heard great things about it and I'm very excited to give it a shot. I plan to finish Ace Attorney Investigations first, though, and maybe Riven as well before I get to it.
Zero Escape was really something else, especially the later entries. Awesome characters throughout but yeah, those plots got NUTS. Still, nothing will ever blow my mind more than the twist at the end of 999!
Have been trying to get into Dwarf Fortress recently. Thought I was hot shit coming off of Rimworld being able to build massive bases and conquer the world and everything. Then I got a message like 15 minutes into the DF tutorial saying there were zombies coming and all my little ASCII dudes started running around and dying and I have absolutely no idea what happened or what to do there's so much stuff omg
On my second attempt now and have managed to survive one whole year with 20-something dwarves. Successfully traded with a dude, got a bunch of beer, tried making a well in an aquifer and failed miserably, flooding a bunch of stuff in the process. Too afraid to press like 80% of the buttons yet. I'm just chanting "losing is fun" over and over as I play and hoping it'll work out.
It's good fun.
Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak II came out on Valentine's Day, and I've been enjoying it thoroughly! Another excellent turn-based RPG.
There's some interesting choices in the structure and design of the game that have clearly taken inspiration from Trails into Reverie, which I find interesting... each chapter is split into two simultaneous halves, where you either follow the main character of the first game, Van Arkride, or his two new 'substitutes', Swin Abel and Nadia Rayne.
They've also brought back the 'ever-expanding dungeon' that was used in the Trails of Cold Steel games, but mixed it with the 'procedurally generated dungeon' that they used in Trails into Reverie. This time around it's called the Marchen Garten. These parts can be a little tedious, but luckily seem to be entirely optional. The main game still has plenty of dungeons and the like, but because characters rotate in and out of the cast between chapters based on the plot, this section allows you to play with your favorite characters more often and keep them leveld up. Feels like a nice way of doing it IMO, but it could still be better, of course. I feel like if they're going to lean into some roguelike-ish elements, it might be cool if they took more inspiration from roguelikes, with things like floor modifier effects, etc... that encourage you to change up your strategy more.
Besides that, the main plot is interesting enough so far. Not quite as immediately gripping as the first game, unfortunately, but it's got a compelling mystery and some nice twists already. I'm excited to see where it goes. And the gameplay itself remains superb, with lots of small tweaks that have really improved the experience overall and balanced the game even further. There was even a really awesome mechanical surprise in the boss fight of the latest chapter I completed that blew my socks off!
Overall, for any fans of turn-based RPGs, I once again cannot recommend the Trails series enough - especially with the upcoming remake of Trails in the Sky First Chapter being the best possible entry point into the franchise. : )
I also played the demo for Aethermancer recently, which I really enjoyed. This is the next game from Moi Rai Games, the developers of Monster Sanctuary. While Monster Sanctuary took monster-collectors and mashed them up with metroidvanias, this time around they're trying to mash them up with roguelikes.
It's clearly already that they've taken a lot of inspiration from some of the best roguelikes of late, including Hades and Slay the Spire. Overall, it's really promising, but there's definitely some uneven parts of the game - which is to be expected, as it's really early in development still. The actual combat remains amazing, with lots of rich mechanics, systems, and interactions that immediately excite the theorycrafting parts of the brain. Every time I unlocked a new skill or trait for my monsters, or discovered a new monster, it immediately got me thinking about all the possibilities I could try out next time!
Just like Monster Sanctuary, there's an emphasis on synergy between your monsters, and developing an overall gameplan - but also making sure to cover your weaknesses and have a spread of roles on your team. Especially in this game, healing, tanking, and shielding are important, because any damage you take without healing quickly lowers your starting HP at the beginning of each battle, which adds up fast!
New overhauls to the combat include a shared resource system across the entire team, where monsters generate elemental mana each turn. This is similar to the MP system from Monster Sanctuary, but vastly simplified - and differentiating between elemental mana makes it a lot deeper and more interesting, while sharing mana across the entire team is another fun spin that helps create more diverse roles. E.g. while two monsters both might be healers, one of them might specialize in very efficient cheaper skills, while another might have more expensive but more effective healing skills.
Outside of the combat, unfortunately, the game is still a little rough around the edges. Getting from battle to battle is more like Hades, with a map to traverse, collectibles to find by breaking environmental objects, etc... and this part is, eh, not as fun. I almost wish the game was more like Slay the Spire, just focusing on the battles and narrative events between them. In Hades, it makes sense that there's breakable environmental objects - you can often just destroy these as collateral damage during a fight, and the game is already an action game focused on movement and real-time combat. But in Aethermancer, destroying objects is entirely secondary to the core gameplay loop, so it just kinda feels like busywork roaming around the map and looking for bushes to rummage in for spare coins.
The NPCs and upgrades you get between and during runs are interesting, and where the majority of lore drops come from. There are a few environmental setpieces you can interact with for additonal lore, which was nice. Again, though, it just felt like busywork finding these NPCs.
Luckily, Moi Rai are very open to feedback! So I'm confident the game will sharpen up with time. And I do still think the game has a lot of potential, and I trust the developers to deliver after the masterpiece that was Monster Sanctuary.
I am a trucker and I am in Europe…2. I continue my journey of taking the funniest deliveries I can, such as a comically large vat of olive oil from Greece to Italy as I explore all the cities in the game. If you happen to be an NPC car in my game and you see my Mercedes truck painted like their F1 car in your rear view mirror, I’m sorry.
I've finished 1000xResist over the weekend and I found this is a really solid narrative experience. It's ostensibly a science fiction story with some heavy Evangelion inspiration (I mean...), but it's really a story about a girl living in the West with parent coming from Hong Kong who end up in a fucked up situation.
Being a 2nd gen immigrant myself (but not this country nor this conflict) it was easy to be sympathetic to what Iris went through (... my parents are cool tho). But a bit like Everything Everywhere All at Once it's not only about the difficulties of mixing wonton and maple sirup, it's also about upbringing, toxic relationship, repetition, religion, politics and political systems, Hong Kong, the end of the world and the end of a world and of course resistance (how, when, why).
Those themes can probably resonates with the uh... political kerfuffle in the US of A I'm sure many of Tildes reader are experiencing.
Anyway, the story itself is very well constructed and you'll uncover the story and themes layer by layer, with each chapter recontextualizing what just transpired so far.
Earlier in another edition of this recurring thread @Gaywallet asked
So here's my answers:
Lingering question
So what happened to the original sisters ? I mean, we find their graves, but how did they die ? We learned that Chapter 2 might be a fabrication of Youngest, and I doubt Iris would also kill the original sisters in a bout a rage (clone-Jiao is enough), and if I remember correctly she rather went in exile to do a perma communion with the Occupant.
Moving moment
The parents reminiscing about the protest and debating over the futility of it over the last drop of alcohol of the world. Probably one of the strongest moment of the game.
Irking moment
The epilogue feels a bit jarring. After so much meticulous narration then suddenly you ask the player for their opinion, just before forcing/judging/assessing their choice with some obviously bad choices (insta repeat, no real epilogue / credit sequence) and some without any real opinion on them (parents doesn't change anything).
Thanks for tagging me and chiming in with your experience! I resonate strongly with both your moving and irking moments.
thoughts
I think a lot of the parent's narratives (and their parents narratives) on the protests were some of the best dialogue in the game. There were certainly some story-lines and characters which I just couldn't resonate with at all, but none of the characters felt as if they were too one-dimensional or couldn't exist - they just made very different decisions than I could ever see myself making. Some of these characters irked me, but nothing irked me as much as the epilogue for the same reasons you mention - it felt either forced (executives maybe?) or rushed and I'm not sure which. Either way it really didn't land with me, albeit the choices I wanted to make happened to more or less be the 'best' ending answers anyways and felt like they resonated strongly with the morals of the storytelling. If you ignore the illusion of choice (as you mentioned some answers literally force you to restart) or view the ending as a statement on the illusion of choice it feels a little bit more palatable to me.Stuff that didn't resonate with you
Isn't that intentional though ? I have the feeling that many of the characters and stories are illustration of how (and why ?) to endure/resist to hardship .And that's perhaps why the ending is irking us so much: it's prescriptive but not developed enough to feel earned/justified.
Yeah honestly it's a minor nitpick; I agree with your analysis
I was playing Project Zomboid B42 until update 42.4.0 broke a ton of mods and some of the game itself.
The game has become my happy place. Not happy now.
I finally finished Dragon Age: Origins over the weekend, and I think in the end, I was not a fan. It was really the combat that did it in for me. It got to be extremely tedious toward the end, and I think I just made maybe one of the least interesting characters I could've made, so that didn't help. (I generally prefer to do archer builds in these games, and there just wasn't anything interesting about that by the end.)
What really got me was the fight against Loghain near the end. The entire game, mostly, was built around team combat. But I didn't have a single character who could 1v1 Loghain, and there was also no way to save before initiating the duel, so every time I died I had to reset back to this massive brawl that took forever to get through. Just to get passed this section, I finally had to put on an immortality cheat which is really embarrassing to me, but by then I just wanted to finish the game.
I enjoyed the story, but the tactics combat just didn't click for me. I'm still planning on (eventually) playing through the Awakening DLC and at least DA: 2, as I've heard the combat is different. And I also know not to do an archer build again.
I've been slowly playing Custom Robo, for Gamecube on an emulator on my phone. I'm using touch controls instead of my blue tooth controller (lazy to get it every time I want to play for a couple of minutes) and it has definitely limited how I play the game.
Why this game? My friends and I would play it together during sleep overs and I also beat the main campaign as a kid over a weekend when borrowing it from a friend. The writing is fun and I don't have to think too hard about the plot since I already know it. I did find out there's a whole post story tournament arc that I never played as a kid. I'm not sure if I'll still want to play after I complete the short main story (I want to say its ~6 hours long) but we'll see.
I'd recommend it to anyone who is interested in some arena battling and a not too serious story. If you do play it, talk to everyone. I think the side characters and background plots are fun and worth taking the few extra minutes to go and find.
Ive gotten sucked back into minecraft for the first time in, oh, 7 years or so. I was really into minecraft back in the day due to all the automation mods, I loved logistics pipes and buildcraft. However, eventually I got really into factorio, and factorio scratched the same itch, but with a bit less lag. A friend convinced me to try out the Create mod, and I love it. Everything is so... kinetic, everything is moving, and its mesmerizing to watch your contraptions come to life.
Played the playtest for Fellowship over the course of the Steam Next Fest. I think it's a good game but I think it's kind of glued at the hip to WoW and scared to take any divergent risks. Game heavily needs UI/UX work, I really hope the current iteration is not their idea of the HUD being far along in development.
Generally speaking, I do come from an MMO background but not from a WoW background, so a lot of things in Fellowship are just not to my taste, though. I'd say if the game wants to please me (and I'm just 1 potential customer so it really doesn't matter much what I think) they're at high risk of me not continuing to play the game when it releases without significant changes.
The biggest one for me is I seriously don't like how much important information is shown in nameplates in WoW and Fellowship, I really prefer FFXIV's Enmity List but I don't expect something like that to make it in as WoW itself banned an addon with similar functionality for being too easy to multi-DoT with, and of course Fellowship is sticking so close to WoW so I'm not optimistic.
Otherwise, I need to finish Futures Rewritten (Ultimate) in FFXIV. I'm like 17% remaining of Phase 4 out of 5 phases, so I'm nearly done, but I've severely dropped off from working on the fight after my static disbanded in January, so I just need to find some help from friends and make a sprint for the end.
I played some Two Point Museum and really liked it so far. After trying the previous game (University), I felt that they'd tried something new but it didn't really work, so I was apprehensive about Museum, especially since University only released like 2 or 3 years ago and I didn't think they could have made a whole new installment in that time. Thankfully it's been an excellent iteration of the formula, although in some ways is more like a Zoo Tycoon type game (or I guess, the new Jurassic Park management games where you bring back DNA to make dinosaurs to display). The pacing of the experience is broken up a bit more so that you're not tempted to grind 3 star museums before you have all the game's tools in your toolbox, something I was guilty of in Hospital.
Anyway, the point is that if you enjoyed Two Point Hospital and not 100% purely for Theme Hospital nostalgia, I'd recommend giving it a try when you find the opportunity.
My other games right now are Avowed and Diplomacy is Not an Option. Avowed has been fun but I'm not too far in yet; honestly seems pretty laid back and easy for an RPG. Diplomacy is Not an Option has been brutal but fun. It's a strategy castle-defense game with a pretty simple scenario based campaign; it's just hard enough to be interesting. I think most people probably bounced off this one since I'm midway through the campaign and am receiving achievements with 2.5% global achievement rate.
I've been playing Crokinole. It's a really fun Canadian dexterity game that has you flicking wooden discs towards the center of a board. It's a bit complicated to explain the rules but is not unlike the ice game curling; where shuffleboard is a mini tabletop version of curling, Crokinole has you sitting around a round board doing something similar.
I originally found a cheap board at a garage sale years ago and fell in love with it. The board was in rough shape and didn't come with pieces so I repurposed an old checkers set but it worked. I always intended to pick up a proper board but after our kid was born it was all but forgotten.
I recently purchased a proper tournament quality board made in Quebec and what a difference! It even came with speed sand similar to shuffleboard and it feels like a totally different game now.
I love wooden and dexterity games so Crokinole is right up my alley, but I actually found it as a poor-weather game for when I can't be outside playing Kubb.
Kubb is tons of fun and a great way to bring people together. We love bringing it to BBQs, the beach or camping. You can play with 2-12 people and like many things can be more fun with beers. We have some house rules to make it more exciting like allowing trashtalk/twerking while the opponent throws, and the stacking of field kubbs if they touch when you throw them.
You can find a set for under $100 or make your own like I did for my first set for under $50.
I'm eagerly awaiting good weather to play Kubb!