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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.
I'm nearly two decades late to the party, but I just played through Portal for the first time after my friend recommended it and I snagged it on a Steam sale. GLaDOS is the best, and I enjoyed the puzzles so much. Wish it were longer, but I have the sequel queued up to start soon.
Aside from that, I've been slowly working through the B-sides in Celeste. After that I think I'll finally try the Farewell chapter!
Just in case you're not emotionally prepared, Farewell itself is almost as long as the rest of the game. Also at the halfway point you need to have 15 hearts to advance - once you finish the B-sides you'll have at least 8, but you'll need to find some hidden blue ones from the A-sides and/or finish a bunch of C-sides.
It's fun but can be extra challenging and sometimes confusing. There were some parts I couldn't figure out and watched a playthrough to see how they did it. The final room is much longer than the others and it was really cathartic to finally clear it. (Then I found out about the moon berry which was also really tough to get but somehow didn't feel as good when I got it).
Thanks for the heads up! I already had to go back for a few of the A-side crystal hearts to advance through Core, and I kind of like that we’re forced to revisit completed levels. Even though I’m still not “good” at this game, I do feel more confident the second time around some rooms.
Ohh, right, forgot about that. Getting the A-side hearts was another thing I ended up looking up how to do (one of them I always have to look up in re-playthroughs too, you can probably guess which haha).
The difficulty is organized pretty well, I think. There were a few times I hit a wall and decided to stop, but came back later to it when I felt ready to challenge myself further. But Farewell did catch me off guard with how long it was, even by chapter 3/9.
Both great games! I'm sure your friend probably recommended this as well, but definitely check out Portal 2 when you're done with the first game. It's equally good, if not better!
Oh it's definitely better. It expands everything. The puzzles, story, atmosphere. It's what every sequel should strive to be
/Noise, but what I wouldn’t give to play through Portal 2 and Celeste (and Farewell) for the first time again... Enjoy!
Schedule I
If you're not an American, you would be forgiven not to immediately realize that this is a game about illegal drugs. More specifically, this game is clearly Breaking Bad: The Video Game, complete with a car wash that is reminiscent of the actual car wash in Albuquerque used in the show.
In the game, you're a small-time drug dealer working to build his (I believe you can only be a man?) drug empire.
The game loop seems to appeal to my autistic nature: buy ingredients, craft drugs from ingredients (simulating planting, watering, and cutting your marijuana plants, similar for cooking meth, etc.), marketing and selling them on the street, working with dealers, rinse, repeat, grow your empire, and automate it (almost) as much as you want.
There is a certain autistic joy in this loop. It's mostly predictable. It can be optimized. You can also go into hyperfocus, attending to the little details, or outsource most of the details and attend primarily to the logistics and growing at the edges of the business.
I'm impressed, as it's the work of a single developer.
I've been playing it as well and am really enjoying it. There's some jank for sure (why do some NPCs skin go from white to black when I give them a free sample? Pretty sure that's just a side effect of how their eyes are supposed to turn red when they're stoned).
Either way, it's a relatively calm game, at least at the stage I'm at. There are some weapons, but I've never encountered someone hostile yet other than a letter you receive right after the intro zone. The scariest thing (other than running from the cops who are pretty good at finding you) was the one time I had some guy just approach me on the street and say he really needed to buy something from me. I happened to have some on me, so that ended well, but I wonder if he would have gotten angry if I had said no...
Long story short, I'm also enjoying the casual buy/craft/sell/upgrade that makes up the loop and would say it's well worth the price, even as an early access game. The dev seems to be steadily improving on it and it sounds like he's got plans for the future, so I'm looking forward to seeing what he's going to make out of it!
Oh, I think the black is intentional: they're baked!!!
Also, yeah, that guy can indeed get angry....
Got a new laptop recently and decided to put it through its paces with Cyberpunk 2077; I've already played 50-hours of this game last year or so and...I feel sort of ambiguous about it. Maybe that's not the right word, but there's a lot I do not like about the game.
The open world feels dead, completely lifeless. Traveling around the world on foot or in a car, it feels all like cardboard cutouts, nothing really exists and I don't feel immersed. You see the same advertisements everywhere, the same NPCs (often standing right next to each other), the same canned animations, it doesn't react well to the player, it again just feels absolutely lifeless.
The upgrade/perk system whatever feels pointless. I've got some upgrades on my character, I can double jump, that's neat, but I don't feel like anything has come in handy during gameplay. Being able to smash doors or hack things better, whatever, it doesn't feel like it actually nets me anything and doesn't give me an ImSim vibes of being able to take different routes to objectives. I've pretty much largely ignored the perk system and just let points build-up until I feel like something could be useful, then just dumped everything into getting that. It doesn't feel additive in anyway and just feels like a distraction.
Similarly, the crafting system is completely pointless and ignorable. I feel compelled to pick-up crafting components and whatnot because it's all different colors that demand my attention, but why? I hate crafting in games as is and it seems extra pointless here, just crap to fill-up another screen.
Looting enemies, why? I have piles upon piles of guns and none of them really seem to be any better or more interesting than the next. This isn't Borderlands; pretty much every gun feels the same and this one has slightly more damage or whatever than the next, but I feel just fine with what I've got.
Similarly, I'm all powerful already anyway. I'm "leveling up" (at like level 39 or something) and I've just completed a major section of the game and I feel no real challenge; not that it's something I'm necessarily looking for from this game, but I simply blast my way through every enemy without much trouble and without thinking about it. Again this doesn't encourage me to use any of the other systems in the game, it all just feels like filler.
So, that said, I want to keep playing. I'm now at 64-hours and I'm simply enjoying the storytelling, mostly following the main quest, character stories and little side quests that branch off from the main. In spite of all my annoyances with the game, I am enjoying my play sessions and like soaking-up the atmosphere from the story missions. I do feel like the game would have been better if it was just more of a focused, linear game with hints at the edges of a wider world; I feel it would have left me wanting more and eager to see an open world, which would be better than the apathy and annoyance I feel when I do actually wander around.
I do also want to say, as a Metal fan, I am very appreciative that they included real Metal and some actual Black Metal at that. I know that sounds gatekeepy, but so many games include "Metal" which ends-up being nothing more than hard rock; feels like Cyberpunk had a person in charge of the music who is into the genre as I am and pushed to include the real deal.
Edit: Actually, just after finishing this post, I reloaded my save and finished the game, rolling credits.
I'm assuming I can go back to my character and do the DLC stuff, but I'm also debating if I'd like to play again and make a different choice at the end.
I feel you so much on all of your points as I’m currently on and off playing through this game for the first time. I’m using headphones to immerse myself more, but I also just feel like its staying power with my attention is weak. I play for maybe an hour at most and just get bored. I’m at level 39 and feel the same strength and pointlessness to every battle. The dialogue feels contrived, bro-speak heavy, and sometimes unintelligible. Maybe that’s the point? I agree though, maybe we should choose different options, but I think for real immersion, we’re going to have to play something like Kingdom Come Deliverance 2.
Thanks for reassuring my disbeliefs in an otherwise AAA game… I can’t imagine playing it on an older system.
Just glad I'm not alone! Feels like it gets effusive praise while the game doesn't totally hit for me.
On this most recent return to it, adjusting my expectations really helped me. I previously would jump in, wander the world a bit and feel like I should be playing something else the entire time. This most recent time playing, I decided I know what the world has to offer, so I'm going to avoid it as much as possible and focus on the story stuff. I decided the upgrades were pointless and not worth digging through (+5% to XYZ, you know?) and I'm doing fine in the game without all that. I decided I'm just going to stop being attracted to looting things and just completely ignore it all and just focus on the mission at hand.
All of that made it way easier for me to focus on the story and just enjoy what I was doing, not feeling burdened by all this other faff.
And yeah, KC:D is my jam, easily one of my favorite, if not my favorite, games of all time. I'm really wanting to get KC:D2, but I'm putting it off until I put the effort into playing a bunch of other stuff I've bought relatively recently. But I'm hoping to pick it up soon.
One of the things that might help your enjoyment of the upgrade system on a replay is to pick one or two paths (Cool, Reflexes, etc.) and stick to just those. It's not a necessarily hard game, and you can get through it pretty easily by just storing up perk points until they're necessary like you did and just shooting through levels. However, it is much more interesting to choose in your head from the start what you want your character to be (Stealthy hacker dumping all points into intelligence? using cool and technical ability to take out enemies through walls from a mile away? using body and a sandevistan to cut through enemies before they can even move?) and put your points towards that. While I generally don't use Youtube build guides for singleplayer games, there's a wealth of guides on there that might give you some inspiration on what kind of playstyle you want your character to have.
Are you open to installing mods? I did my first play through two ish years ago with a large mod pack that I felt really helped with immersion. Two mods that stood out for me were one that let you climb anything, and another that let you have an upgradable drone that you could use to scout.
Also I agree with the comment that putting guard rails a bit on my experience helped. In particular I found I enjoyed the game more doing it stealth first with the occasional massacre if I got bored or messed up.
Yeah, mods certainly don't scare me.
But I'm largely happy with where my experience is now. I've finally made it in to Dogtown, though I'm still doing the intro stuff there now and I didn't actually spend any time playing yesterday.
So, I understand that this is a recurring thread?
The news around Metroid Prime 4 in recent weeks got me feeling that “itch” for Metroid Prime again. So, I pulled out Dolphin (which even had a new stable release entry, that finally added a feature that I’ve always wanted: play time), and started a new file.
Before I get to the game, I just want to acknowledge how incredibly miraculous it is that so many people have donated tens of thousands of hours to reverse engineer highly complex hardware and software systems, to give us an emulator that runs so buttery smooth. I’m on an M1, and have the resolution upscaled to 2K (I have a 1440p monitor) as I play Metroid Prime (it can handle that much for this game). That upscaling by itself already breathes new life into the game. The graphical experience isn’t flawless, of course, but I rarely lose the immersion when I play on Dolphin these days. That’s an incredible achievement for a piece of software that is free and open-source.
Metroid Prime has surprised me. I can’t remember when it was that I last played the game, but it could very well be that it was sometime before 2008 (or even earlier), so that’s a good while ago. I had forgotten quite a bit about it, so this almost felt like a fresh experience, and I have been loving it. It was actually yesterday that I got the Phazon Suit, so I’m now just going around collecting the last upgrades and the Artifacts before I face off Meta Ridley and Metroid Prime. I will always love how the story in this game is told by “scanning” the environment for log entries and murals. It’s just a very unique method of storytelling that makes it extremely enjoyable to explore the world. And the writing is fantastic.
I remember that the only major complaint people had about the original Metroid Prime, was the “backtracking”. I have to tell you though, that I didn’t have any trouble with it whatsoever. I do remember struggling to beat this game when I was a kid, but now as a 35-year-old, it’s actually very easy. From the moment you land on Tallon IV, the game literally just holds your hand (even the bosses didn’t feel particularly challenging). You get these “notifications” on your visor, alerting you about “anomalies” that you need to investigate, which then also show you the exact room where they can be found. These rooms always contain the next upgrade that you need in order to progress in the game, and if you stick to following these objectives (and pay attention to the map, and scan everything you lay eyes on), then it is actually extremely linear, and you don’t really “backtrack” in the literal sense. You just move from objective to objective (and the distances aren’t even that great). A lot of the energy and missile upgrades can even be picked up along the way. And once you have all the main suit upgrades, then the world completely opens up and you can do one last sweep through the entire map to pick up the remaining energy and missile upgrades (as well as missile combos and Power Bomb upgrades). So, my conclusion (and assumption) is that we all played this game when we were young and inexperienced, and didn’t pay attention to the very obvious hints that we got through the scanning data and through the notifications, and wandered around aimlessly, and that’s why this idea that there is a lot of backtracking persisted. After replaying it, I’d say that this game would have merited a 10/10 back then. Easily. It’s a Gamecube must play.
Yes! One of my favorites. Hearing about what everyone else is playing gives me some great games to add to my list. Often times these are games that I would have never heard about or considered otherwise.
Amen. I never played Metroid Prime before, but appreciate all the work that has been put into the emulation world. Your description of the game makes me really interested in checking it out!
I just started playing Avowed this weekend. Haven't gotten too far, but I am enjoying it. It's certainly not revolutionary, but I finished Dragon Age Origins a month or so ago, and it feels like a modern, improved version of that classic. I definitely appreciate the combat, it's much better than DA:O, or Morrowind which I enjoyed recently.
Returnal on PS5.
I’ve been recently understanding my tastes in gaming more, with my completion of God of War: Ragnarök and the Valhalla post-game, The Last of Us pt2’s No Return side-game, and now Returnal… Rogue-likes are where it’s at for me, and I can’t wait for Hades II…
Anyway, this game had mixed reviews from people, even Tildsters, and I can’t afford everything, so it was on sale last month and haven’t stopped trying to beat it since. I’m consumed by it.
It’s difficult, in the sense that you really do have to keep dying for it to become beatable. I’m sure I’m not the greatest gamer, but it took close to forty deaths to finish the first three Biomes. I love the music and atmosphere, and the story does kind of makes sense some of the time, but I haven’t completed it yet, so that could change. I do recommend it to anyone who likes this genre! It feels like a game I grew up with back in the early 2000’s grown up in the modern era, and the combat is so smooth that getting efficient with battles feels like a solid accomplishment.
Really really enjoyed my time with Returnal. I agree that it took a while to click. But once I was through the first three biomes, I was hooked. Have you played much since finishing biome 3?
I finally finished the sixth yesterday. It took me a long time! I do love the style of combat. Some of the frustration comes from weapons working against my style (the charge shot for the handgun is ridiculous in my opinion). But yes! I think I’m going to tinker with it until I get the platinum… It feels worth it, but I also just got Atomfall, so that may take up a lot of my headspace. Are there any other games you’d recommend?
Okay, I didn’t want to spoil it but the fourth biome coupled with the music is one of my top recent memories in gaming. Truly incredible stuff! Congrats on getting through 6!
I don’t actually play a ton of roguelites in that vein so I don’t have many recommendations that would scratch the same itch. Hades and Enter the Gungeon are both phenomenal for example, and Hades is also very endearing and well written, but even so, neither of them pack the emotional punch that I so appreciated from Returnal. If you liked the moment to moment gameplay, CONTROL feels very similar with the added bonus that it’s easier IMO (and you feel more powerful).
Dead Space remake
I thoroughly enjoyed my first play through of this game. I got it free from the PS+ monthly game drop, did not know anything about it nor did I play the original, just went in blind. The combat in this game is straight from resident evil 4. The behind the shoulder camera, the limited inventory space, the sparse ammo drops forcing you to be creative with your kills. It’s just set in space and it works great.
The game is creepy as hell. The sound design is immaculate and the music is so creepy I love/hate it. The zero gravity sections in the game were so well done I was genuinely impressed. It took me about 16 hours to beat the game on hard difficulty and I nearly obtained all items except one I think.
I highly recommend this game for any horror game enthusiast. Seems like a true classic in the genre.
The remake is amazing, it’s very faithful to the concept of the first game, yet it makes a lot of big improvements. The level design is a lot tighter, the “AI director” system is very effective in building the atmosphere, the story is fleshed out more (fun fact: in the original, Isaac was a silent protagonist), and some tedious missions are reworked for the better.
I really hope the same studio gets the green light for remaking the sequel. Dead Space 2 was an even better game, so I’m curious what they can do with it.
I'm still playing Lies of P, and I'm on the last third of the game. The level design is still great, the mobs are still "hard-but-not-too-much", and I still hate the bosses. So far, so good.
I also spent 8 hours in Path of Exile 2, and allow me to do some meta-commentary: what the hell is that awfully whiny toxic community?! The 0.2 release from Friday has been awfully badly received (I personally have no opinion on it), and I can't even begin to understand that reaction. All I've read are players who want changes to make the game more like PoE1 (just play that instead?) and don't seem to understand they're playing a beta.
Anyway, I'm still having fun with my summoning witch, which is all that matters. Now if only developers would stop making solo games 100% online, that'd be great.
What I am playing recently is Dwarf Fortress (Steam Edition), Dark Souls Remastered and The Witcher 3.
Dwarf Fortress (Steam Edition) - was gifted this for my birthday a few weeks back. And it really just draws you in despite how complex it is (at least for me). I did had a few false starts because of my lack of experience and not really realizing that you can in fact mine through damp stone to get to the next z layer or that you need aquifers for your dwarfs to not die. I tend to play games like this first without looking at tutorial videos first to see how far I was going, that lasted until like my forth fortress ended in a failure. Then I found the Youtuber Blind's tutorials that really explain what the hell is happening. Overall I am having fun.
I did try (and I do mean try) to play the original free version of the game a few years back, like a year before the Steam version was a thing (I think). I had wanted to play it because Rimworld was influenced by it.
The Witcher 3 - Admittedly I am not playing this as much as I probably should. And again I got this as a gift for my birthday because I had never played it before, and I had played the previous games in the series.
Dark Souls Remastered - Thought I had talked it before, but apparently not(?)(or I did and it just was removed), I was going to linked my thoughts about in my original because they didn't changed. What they basically were is that I am enjoying the game (in offline) and I am trying to get back to where I had to stop due to circumstances.
You definitely should play The Witcher 3 more. I recommend cranking the difficulty up to Death March. It really makes the game mechanics shine. Use Quen a lot if you're having problems. One of my favourite RPGs of all time. Have fun!
I picked up Stardew Valley again after having purchased it day 1 and never "completing" the game on a save. I'm playing a save I started on my phone a few years. One of the best features for me that they added in mobile is the ability to pick up exactly where you left off. You can close the app and can load in at any moment. This is great since with my kids I may need to drop the game at any time and on the PC I would need to play in day increments.
I did find out that you can mod the game on Android, which is a plus, but I'll stick to a vanilla play through for now.
I've decided to not do any wiki deep dives when I play the game. If I'm curious about something, like where to fish for sturgeon, I'll look up that particular thing and try not to go down a link rabbit hole. I'll stumble across things as I come to them and learn from my mistakes instead of trying to plan too far ahead.
Just got my hands on a ROG ALLY and finally tried Stardew Valley for the first time with some friends. It's honestly the perfect game to relax and just spend time together even for those with a lower end pc or poor internet connection.
I do the same thing! Kind of. If I need to find something or have a question, I ask the people I'm playing with instead, I've warn them I like to learn by myself and that they should only answer what I ask. So far I'm loving it!
I've always wondered how it would feel to have one of those PC gaming hand held devices. How have you enjoyed yours?
Stardew Valley running on low powered systems is honestly such a plus! When I tried to get my wife to play it with me, it ran perfectly fine on her low powered laptop that barely ran anything.
It has been amazing! Didn't even break a sweat running Stardew Valley. It's actually powerful enough that I tried GTA V and even Cyberpunk 2077. After tweaking a few power-saving settings and lowering the graphics to medium for the most part, it ran smoothly for hours. I ran out of battery before it even got to creazy temps. It's pretty impresive to have that level of performance on the go!
And yeah! Stardew is perfect for some casual gaming in pretty much any system, it requeires so little that you can play for hours without worrying much. How did she enjoy playing it?
She didn't end up liking it, but I hold out hope that she'll come around eventually!
I didn't enjoy it much at first either, but it really grew on me so good luck!
Pokemon Radical Red (Romhack)
I haven't played a pokemon game in years, but kept hearing about Radical Red enough that I ended up trying it on a whim. I haven't been able to put it down.
It's a romhack of the Pokemon Firered that adds:
Radical Red's difficulty is tuned to force you to engage with pokemon's battle system in ways the official games never did, since even a random trainer on the road might set up a combo that sweeps your entire team.
I probably have 20 EV trained pokemon now that I have to swap between whenever I need a new approach to beat a trainer. I spent a bit of time learning about competitive team building in pokemon, since I found myself needing answers to problems I never had to deal with before (how do you safely swap to other pokemon in battle, keeping your team healthy without items, etc..).
Raising so many pokemon would be tedious in the official games, but everything in this romhack is designed to make it easy to do that experimentation. Once you've encountered a pokemon in the wild, you can use your DexNav to encounter it again. You don't need to teach your Pokemon HMs to use their effects in the field. You can fully EV train your pokemon in 5 minutes or so. If you care enough, you can spend money to max our a pokemon's IVs. And it's very easy to get any new pokemon to the same level as the rest of your team.
Radical Red has been a fun excuse to re-experience Kanto and the romhack adds a bunch of small story additions from other regions (rivals, gym leaders) that I find really fun. This probably as close as I'll get to the pokemon game I wish Nintendo would make themselves.
Artis Impact (demo) (again)
I replayed the demo again (see original thoughts).
I love this game so much. I caught myself with the silliest smile on my face while I was playing. I replayed this expecting to just re-experience what I'd already done, but this playthrough felt very fresh because I'd somehow missed a bunch of mini-cutscenes/events. I noted 20 or so that I hadn't experienced in my first playthrough, and then found out later that there's still more stuff that I hadn't seen.
I really hope the full game lives up to the quality of the demo, because I've been having a blast.
Oooh, Artis Impact sounds great! Thanks so much for sharing! I've added that one to the wishlist, and will have to check out the demo shortly.
Radical Red is a game I've heard a lot of positive praise about, but just haven't sat down to try. I really enjoyed my playthrough of Fool's Gold, but haven't really delved into other romhacks besides that. Will need to check this one out soon too!
I've been playing Lingo. It's like Antichamber (sprawling convoluted untextured dungeon in which distance and direction mean little) meets The Witness... if the puzzle panels were all word-related.
Each puzzle panel consists in one word or short expression (the prompt) and a series of dashes, representing the number of characters the answer must have. You can then try to type in the correct answer any amount of times. Some panels only unlock after a number of other panels nearby have been solved, while others will open new doors and passages if solved correctly. Throughout the game, you learn that panel positions, wall colors and even other nearby panels can tell you more about the kind of answer you're looking for. It can be synonyms, rhymes, anagrams, clues hidden in the environment and much more.
For such a cheap game, it seems surprisingly expansive. It felt like I worked quite hard with my friend to obtain our 9 achievements so far (each corresponding to a fully solved "wing" of the bizarro dungeon) in over 6 hours.. Yet there are 33 achievements remaining. We keep finding new areas, secret passages, rooms hidden behind walls, etc. It's also easy to get distracted half way through solving an area when you find a new area (or literally enter it by accident and find out there is no way back), only to have a hell of a difficult time finding that area again later since the hallways keep changing. Or while you're looking for it you instead run into another area you lost 3 areas ago... I have a terrible sense of direction but admittedly this is fun. Just like Antichamber. Except without a map.
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This sounds really great! I love these kinds of games, and it being focused on words sounds wonderful, very up my alley. Super excited to check this one out, thank you so much for sharing!
I've been playing through Dark Deity II. It's a tactical battler in the vein of FF Tactics or Fire Emblem, with chunky pixel graphics supplemented by higher-quality artwork sprinkled in dialog and story scenes - and make no mistake, this is a game that really wants to tell you a story, with a surprisingly heavy serving of fully voice-acted dialog. The actual combat is fun and offers a lot of build options, with customizable classes, ability tweaks, weapons, weapon tweaks, stat rings, etc.
I'm 24 hours in currently and I think I'm midway? The story bit really does help to make the characters not feel like interchangeable stat blocks. Good clean fun.
I’ve been in a mood to play some mindless stuff lately. So this week I played through Nodebuster and now dipping into Lazy Galaxy 2
Both great idle clicker style games. Nodebuster is a bit more novel and played through in about 3 hours. Here you don’t click but the cursor pulses at a set interval and you break stuff within its range. Tech tree is satisfying and the power up felt consistent - no time spent grinding anything.
Lazy Galaxy 2 has a city builder mechanic which is quite nice, as well as some idle space battles. It’s pretty decent though it’s gotten quite repetitive after the third or fourth ascension. Still worth some time.
I did break out my New 3DS and got back into Fantasy Life a little bit after a decade or so of it sitting idle. That’s been a nice throwback and it’s pretty low-key low stakes gaming.
I’ve really wanted to get into something more “real” but my mind and mood just have needed something I could check out watching flashing lights and numbers go.
Spacesector got a new update and Helldivers 2 has been calling me back. I just can’t right now.
I recently put a lot of time into Farlanders. It's a fun colony management/puzzle game. The campaign has somewhat cringey dialog but the actual gameplay is quite good, and it has a random storyless free-play mode that offers a lot of replayability. Even after 20 hours I still find it a challenge to keep food/power/water/population all in balance as the game progresses.
Farlanders is a gem. Super underrated.
I've been playing Knights in Tight Spaces, the sequel to Fights in Tight Spaces. It's a deck building rogue-like built upon careful decision making both strategically over the course of a run and tactically on individual turns. The various cards and classes introduce innumerable combinations of approaches to a run, though many are not viable outside the easiest setting.
It's been very addicting, and reminds me of one of my all-time favorite games, Into the Breach. That game had a wonderful balance where your first exposure to the next level always seemed impossible, until you put the pieces together in just the right way and there was somehow a solution to be found. Unfortunately, all the deck-building variation in Knights in Tight Spaces means that the balance is not tuned nearly as well. I hope future patches reign in some aspects of the randomness in the game to avoid putting the player in impossible positions.
I'm really enjoying it as well. My main deal woth both games in the series is how I often feel like I'm playing a near perfect game for an entire run, then one bad turn gets me pinned in a corner or shoved off a balcony, ending my run. I never really feel the ebb and flow of having things go bad for a bit then getting it turned around.
I played a lot of Beyond All Reason this week with my friends. It's a surprisingly good, free RTS which is a spiritual successor to Total Annihilation.
We've been playing a lot of the PVE modes and only just started to be able to win against "normal" AI and it's been really fun! Would recommend to anyone as its like 2GB and free.
Helldivers 2 pulled me out of a year in cryostasis for a few more dives to defend the Malevelon Creek Memorial from the Automaton menace on the first anniversary of the planet's liberation. I was lucky enough to be a part of the defense of Popli IX, which might have been the craziest fight against the bots since the Creek itself. Anyway it was fun to revisit the game after a long break, the player arsenal feels way stronger than before and there's a bunch of new toys to destroy the enemies of managed democracy plus your fellow divers with. For Super Earth!
Monster Hunter Wilds came out with its first title update last week and some rather hard-hitting monsters to go along with it. The grand hub got added and it's got great vibes, the diva singing at night is a very nice touch. HR Zoh Shia's a fun fight though there's still a good amount of people carting to it in multiplayer, but I'm sure they'll figure it out soon enough. Mizutsune is beautifully modeled and animated, and its armor and weapons are quite pretty even if they're not very good. The arena and challenge quest leaderboards are already full of cheaters with impossible clear times but nobody's really surprised at that, just disappointed in Capcom since they'll likely receive no punishment for it aside from having rewards withheld. Overall, pretty good update.
The First Berserker: Khazan
I went into this blind and didn't know it'd be a Soulslike. Got my ass handed to me, both in-game and by NVIDIA's latest drivers causing me to BSOD multiple times and having to roll them back.
Metaphor: ReFantazio
This is perhaps the second-longest RPG I've ever played, having completed it in 90 hours over 14 days.
The only comments I read before playing this game were "baby's first philosophy class" and that the game basically throws away any dilemmas or nuance in the home stretch, which I'd consider valid critique. The messaging is very hamfisted (as you frankly have to be, given the median consumer's media literacy), though the execution of the Machiavellian antagonist was nuanced and compelling… until the final act.
On a meta level, there's baffling writing early on where the in-universe narrator tells Will (the protagonist's canon name) that he must
Royal Capital arc spoilers
acquire the strength, traits and supporters he needs to one day fight Louis and become king, but (a) he's never expressed any interest in doing so and (b) someone from his party is already planning to assassinate Louis tomorrow, so he's essentially telling Will that his friend is imminently about to mortally fail… and he says nothing to anyone about any of this. It doesn't make even the slightest sense, because Will clearly retains his memories of what occurs in that place whenever he leaves.The game's biggest twist was predictable if you've seen a certain highly popular manga/anime series. I'm inclined to believe the game is directly inspired by that series given how many niche tropes are paralleled.
Visually, the aesthetic is pleasing other than how vibrantly red and blue it becomes after the early game; it felt like it took place in a Marvel movie or a GoHands anime. The music (Aftermath) was stuck in my head for the entire two weeks I played.
I've never played an Atlus game before, so the Press Turn Battle mechanic was novel and interesting to me. It did become very clear that the no-penalty retry mechanic was there because the RNG could be complete garbage and unfairly screw you over on the very first turn.
As a purely political aside from an Americentric PoV, I think the main reason the messaging ceased to connect with me toward the end was the naïvely optimistic outlook on human nature. My immersion was broken not by
penultimate arc spoilers / nonconstructive rant
Louis repeatedly shooting people in the middle of Fifth Avenue but rather that he actually lost support for doing so. When Louis's right-hand man, having been mutilated into a monster by his liege, flings himself from the drum tower to his death below in front of Louis's supporters and it begins waking them from their violent populist fervor, I couldn't help but despair that the supporters of a certain aspiring fascist regime would more likely run to the nearest pro-Louis crier to request their talking points on why it's Actually a Good Thing™ that he's turning his most loyal supporters into literal eldritch nightmares than they would ever admit fault in supporting him, because "a few broken eggs" (dead/oppressed people) are needed to make an "omelet" (dictatorship) or whatever goddamned imbecilic, non sequitur, thought-terminating cliché they were last ordered to robotically parrot. Living in a post-truth society with such a frighteningly large proportion of gaslighting, perpetually hateful people who view everything – *especially* human rights – as zero-sum transactions is genuinely a horrific waking nightmare.Anyway, a lot of that is unfair criticism; this is a mass market product, not a deep philosophical treatise. For the most part, I enjoyed the game and would recommend it should Atlus ever remove Denuvo.
I'm 35 hours into Postal 2. I have finished five days on Average difficulty then went on the weekend on easiest and now I'm olaying Paradise Lost on easiest. It is not a real challenge on this difficulty but I enjoy the game the most this way.
I'm surprised how kuch fun the game is! I played it when it came out back in the day and then I went in after 20 years. It is very based and stereotypical game and it doesn't fit in today's world really well. But if you are able to look past it, the game is really fun. I wouldn't advise sensitive people or aggressive people to play it though, it may hurt them in the bad way.
Last time someone recommended trying Postal 4. I may, but not after llaying this one. I already had too much Postal :-) I'm looking forward ti finishing it, getting a few more achievements and be done with it. It is good but you have to lay it off eventually before you start running on the street peeing on everyone.
Pacific Drive recently got a pretty big update.
For starters, they finally figured out whatever problem the save system posed so we went from an Hades system (game saves every time you enter a Junction) to a proper Suspend and quit option.
I know people weren't fond of the game asking for 15-30 minutes without stops at a time, so this will be helpful to those who can't quite lock that much time to Drive.
Besides the much more friendly save (if you don't screw up during a run) they introduced Expeditions, a remixed version of regular drives that basically shove the entire loop of PD into a single run.
Basically you start with next to nothing (it starts off by limiting your inventory, and quickly add your crafting bench and what car parts you have to that) so every run becomes strictly about making the parts you need to get anchors and go through the Gateway, because you just can't afford the space to hoard everything you come across.
Adding to this, Expeditions take place on a randomized map, where the number of Junctions and paths will change each Expedition, and added Junction Features, essentially presets that guarantees certain aspect (for example: Desolate barely have anything, [Blank] Junction are full of whatever they're named after, Pit Stops are stable Junctions with the means to repair, refuel, and recharge your car), which coupled with a region timer that adds conditions that applies to every Junctions the more Junctions you clear, the fact that Junctions you drove through becomes Desolate, and the Instability claiming more and more Junctions over time makes this a very difficult challenge where even routing between Junctions becomes an important choice.
It's fun, but basically need the base game to do supply runs (which makes sense, since it's very end-game oriented), also it shows that I need more pnemalockers, 4 isn't enough...
I'm playing Heaven's Vault. It's a game about an archeologist trying to learn what happened to the long lost empire by studying the ancient language. Of course, you'd be expected to study the ancient language works yourself, similar to Chants of Senaar.
I'd say the game and the story is somewhat interesting. The dialogue system borrows from The Walking Dead where you're expected to reply within a time limit or otherwise an empty response also counts as an answer. The MC and the robot also converse during regular travel which your option are to response, response with a question, or silent. The timeline system looks interesting - it show timeline of events from the long lost empire, from the MC's birth up until the current thing you do. I haven't see the game do anything interesting with the timeline yet though.
That being said, the execution of all gameplay systems are really bad, perhaps except for pausing that you can pause any time even during conversation. I'd feel like the game would be great in open world settings (although with faster walk speed - this is walking sim speed...), but it is not. Even in a small map the game often forcibly yank your controls to force you into random conversation or force walk you into the next area. The robot often nags "are we leaving yet?" when the map is half way explored - it is okay if the robot ask the question when the game detect that every interactable has been interacted. To learn more about the language, you're expected to trade artifacts with one of the two NPCs, who will give you additional texts. But the game never tells you which ones are important (nor there is any text walkthrough written for this game...). It felt like every single game system try to force your hands instead of letting you explore.
I wonder if these forced systems are inspired from Outer Wilds, which I also dislike the time limit aspect of it. (Installing a mod to slow the game time breaks the game, as some events only happen at a later time)
I hope the language system better be even better than Chants.
I've been playing Voices of the Void, I'm not usually a fan of singleplayer spooky games but I like it so far.
I won't say much more because similar to Outer Wilds, the less you know beforehand, the better.
I'm enjoying the new Team fight Tactics set called "Cyber City" that was released a week ago. TFT has become my base game, the game I always get back to.
The game is updated every two weeks (next patch in 8 days) and even in my low levels it is remarkably more fun for the first few days of the new patch as it gets "solved" quite fast and the solutions trickle down. (When the game is "solved" it is harder to play for fun and find fun interactions or combos as you get eliminated more quickly by players playing meta comps)
I often find new games in these topics or on Hacker News or clicking around on itch.io. Two smaller games I've enjoyed lately are: Dragon Sweeper and Breakout71.
I mostly play on an android phone nowadays but I would like to get a good console set-up (doesn't need to be an actual console, but it has to be sofa + large screen + multiple controllers), but there is soooo many things to do and projects to finish and now spring is here again! So, we'll see
Thanks for suggesting Breakout71 - I love brick-breaker games and I feel like there's a lack of high-quality ones for whatever reason! Very eager to check this one out!
EDIT: Got to try it out with a few runs. This is super delightful! I like that the perks started off quite tame, but get more interesting and have more trade-offs as you play more. Even from the very start, though, having to balance catching coins and tracking the ball is already a nice twist compared to the breakout games I've played. Super fun!
I'm glad you like it, it is a very fun and cute game.
I am hoping the developer decides, or rather finds a good way to have the unlocking part be more interesting. Like having secret combos that unlock stuff or something. (I hope for this because it would be more fun than just life time points and because they have stated that they have drawn inspiration from Vampire Survivors)
Baldur's Gate 3. I am determined to finally beat this game. I bought it at launch and played it a lot, but kept rolling new characters, but this time I'm seeing it through, despite some snags.
Act 3 Spoilers
I'm nearing the end of Act 3 and I've completely fallen out of love with my Paladin. Partially because I created him with the intent of him being a tank, with Shadowheart as the healer, but then I kind of pushed her into a deep chasm to death and we've been without a solid healer ever since. I could replace her with one of Withers' creepy people, but I prefer having real fake people with real fake stories at my side. So I've been trying to play both tank and healer with the same character and it's not going well at all. Once he dies it's basically over unless I can kite a boss around the room while ranged picks him off.
Furthermore, I started to take breaks from boss fights that I couldn't do in a few attempts to wait until I hit max level. I've now hit max level and I was left with a queue of questlines that were done up to the boss fight. Meaning a lot of back-to-back boss fights. It was rough couple of days because it's simply not very fun to only do combat. Fortunately I stumbled into the Stone Lord quest line by accident and that served as a good break between killing Orin and taking on Andsur.
But it's not all doom and gloom. Helped Astarian with his papa vampire. It took a little bit of save scumming, but I managed to prevent Astarian from ascending and from leaving the party. I went from really hating Astarian early on to kind of loving the character. He's an ass hole, but also a victim, and his storyline was very good.
Also date night with Karlach was adorable. Trying to etch out a night of normalcy amidst the chaos is incredibly relatable. Both from COVID times and just from being a parent and husband.
Once I finish with this character, I'll probably be rolling a new one. I'm thinking Dark Urge character and going full evil, because I never do that in games. I feel too guilty, but I feel like having a specific character type that's built for that might help? Plus I hear the patches over the last year or so have fleshed out the evil runs a bit. I'm thinking something comical like a halfling monk. Just conducting evil with his fists of fury. But I'll also probably be waiting until Patch 8 comes out, as that will be adding more subclasses and I'll probably want to re-assess the class once more options are available.
I FINALLY finished Rhythm Heaven for the DS, it is by far the hardest game I've ever played, I felt so capable and motivated after finishing it. But won't be trying to Perfect every level because that would be unhealthy for me.
I always play a lot of Final Fantasy XIV, it's kinda my main game that everything else plays second fiddle to. I don't typically contribute much to these threads but today I will.
Last week, on Tuesday 1 April, they released a new tier of Savage raids, which is typically 4 bosses.
It's rather rare to clear the full set in week 1, and much much rarer to do it in a pick-up group (Party Finder, as we say) instead of a "static." (literally a static group, as in the members do not change.)
I played the new raid tier in Party Finder, basically all day every day week 1, reaching the enrage (time limit to have fully killed the boss, basically.) of the final phase of the final boss of the set, but not quite getting across the finish line before the weekly reset.
Y'see, a static group would have looted the earlier bosses in the set, kept all of that looted gear going forward into the next bosses, and even strategically funnelled it to the player of their team's highest DPS class. However, in Party Finder, while I stuck close to a few key players along the way that I met and trusted to perform well, the sad thing is most of said players including myself, won very few to none of the loot rolls, and the players who did win loot, weren't ones who stuck with us and continued to progress with us.
So when we were finally taking on the final boss, we were at a gear deficit compared to static groups and thus had it even harder on the damage check. The people I had originally played with through the week had been dropping out, and me and a friend joined a different group of players who sadly also were rather light on gear. We were trying some optimizations (for those in the know, looking to see if we could carry LB3 through to phase 2, or cutting 6min pots to use them at start of phase 2, etc, which with our gear deficit also called for a clean phase 1 in an execution fight, we truly couldn't afford more than like MAYBE 1 DD on a support at worst.) but not playing clean enough to take advantage of the ideas, sadly. On the last day, so Monday, I played 16.5 hours attempting to clear this boss.
Almost certainly going to finish it this week, but the pressure's gone. There's no difference between today, tomorrow, friday, saturday, sunday, or monday any more at this point. Goal's been missed, it's just another fight to me, now.
Was fun though. Great raid tier.