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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.
Finished Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door today. What an absolute spectacle of a game. Worth waiting the 20 years to finally get a chance to play it.
Next up for me: Pokémon Colosseum. The two 3D Pokémon games on the GCN look weird and interesting. Curious to see if they’re fun.
Edit: Paper Mario had a banger soundtrack. Here are some of my favorite pieces:
I’m considering making Peach’s E-Mail my new ring tone. lol
Some of these boss battle themes were insanely intense. Wow.
I remember Pokemon Colosseum being so cool compared to the other games. Weird is definitely a good word to describe it. But the story was fun, the gameplay was fun too, and it was one of the first ever Pokemon 3D games which was awesome at the time.
No spoilers, but I really love the character with the Ludicolos, don't remember anything about him other than he was hilarious.
Really happy to hear you enjoyed Paper Mario so much; it’s one of my favorite games of all time. I’ve been putting off playing the remake until I had some solid free time, but I finally caved yesterday and I’m so excited to relive the adventure.
The soundtrack has always been good, but I’m already kinda blown away by the new versions. Can’t wait to hear what they’ve done with some of those boss tracks!
Did you have a favorite chapter now that you’ve finished the game? I don’t know if I can decide between 3, 4, or 5, personally. Speaking of, what color Yoshi did you get?
I got pink. Haha. I didn’t realize until a little after I got him that they could come in different colors. It struck me when I noticed that the Yoshi on the title screen was green. lol Actually, I haven’t even looked up if the colors can be determined, but pink (I kid you not) is my favorite color, so that was a cool coincidence.
I think that the Glitz Pit (chapter 3) was my favorite one, and this is despite the fact that I’m actually not a wrestling or fighting sports fan (or a fan of sports in general, lol). I was on the edge of the seat trying to figure out who was “disappearing” the contestants and what was really going on behind the scenes. In hindsight, it wasn’t a plot twist that no one had ever done before, but it still caught me by surprise, and I was moved by the happy ending.
A close second would be chapter 4 (Creepy Steeple, etc.). I actually was not a fan of the theme (I’m just not into “spooky” stuff, lol), and the backtracking annoyed me a bit, but the swap between Mario and Doopliss, and how Vivian (who I find an adorable character and is the party member that I used the most outside of Goombella) joined the heroes, was just so interesting, that I ended up liking the chapter quite a lot.
It’s funny how in both cases, the game took a theme that I’m not a fan off but used it to tell a story that I really enjoyed.
Something that I want to get out of my chest: I absolutely looove the theme that plays when you get a Crystal Star. It feels like you just finished another chapter of an epic journey. It’s so great. More than once I felt quite emotional while hearing it.
I agree with you on the boss battles. Some of the soundtracks are quite intense. I wonder how the new versions sound.
If you do play through the remake, do come back and tell us what you liked about it and how it was different from the original.
Peach's E-Mail sounds like the first part of the Super Mario World title theme, which is indeed a great track.
https://youtu.be/PXYIReEQ24g
Oh my goodness! Thanks for sharing that. I was wondering where that came from because it sounded so familiar. I never played SMW, but I have a feeling that the piece was remixed for some other game that I played, but I can’t remember which one.
Wow, I'm glad you had that experience with Paper Mario TTYD because I had the complete opposite. I found the soundtrack and dialogue to be incredibly dull - maybe it's the speakers on the switch - and the combat just so boring compared to other turn based RPGs like sea of stars. I even made a post here complaining about it lmao.
Perhaps I'll try giving it a go again in the near future, maybe it gets more interesting.
I’m sorry to hear that. It might not be the right fit for everyone. Did you grow up with Gamecube games at all? I grew up almost exclusively with Nintendo home console and handheld games since 1998, so I definitely have “acquired” a taste for them. Also, how far into the game did you get? Some chapters are slower than others, but I do think that once you clear chapter 4, you begin to get more excited to see what will happen in the end. But if you’ve made it that far and still don’t enjoy the game, then I would put it down. There’s no shame in that. I put Pokémon Colosseum down yesterday and started playing Pikmin 2 this morning instead, which I am loving!
I have not. My first console was a PlayStation 1, and then I had an Xbox, Xbox 360 until I moved to PC. For handhelds I had a Gameboy Color and eventually a 3DS.
I barely made it past the first boss, so I guess just the beginning of Chapter 2?
oof Yeah. Chapter 2 is very slow.
Over the last year I've put more time into BattleBit Remastered than any other game but haven't wanted to post about it for a few reasons.
The game is an arcadey Battlefield-esque FPS that primarily focuses on large-scale 126v126 player matches but still offers smaller 8v8, 16v16, 32v32 and 64v64 variants. It has a handful of assorted game modes though many of them generally boil down to capturing/holding/defending certain points/objectives.
When it first released into early access in June 2023 it gained quite a bit of attention as many Battlefield players were unhappy with the state of BF2042. As a result BattleBit became somewhat of an overnight success. At the time the more FPS oriented players of my circle had talked about it but decided against it for two reasons, first being an Early Access title and second was that the low-poly Minecraft-like style wasn't appealing to them.
About nine months later someone suggested the game again as it was on sale for around $10 and at that price despite our reservations we all decided to give it a try. Many of us fell in love with the game immediately and we soon set aside a separate night of the week specifically to play it so that we wouldn't leave behind the few players that didn't really enjoy/do well in PVP FPS games.
So why didn't I want to post about this game that I've been enamoured with? The main reason is that I normally avoid Early Access games like the plague and almost never recommend them regardless of my feelings towards the game as it's not entirely uncommon for them to be abandoned or "ruined" in some way.
And why am I posting about it now? Well, as a cautionary tale to some degree I suppose. When I started playing in March 2024 I was aware that the last update the game had received was in December 2023, though I didn't think much of it as their update cadence prior to that was fairly consistent and they appeared to be very communicative with their customers. A few weeks later upon logging into the game players were prompted with a banner saying that a fairly large update was scheduled to be released mid-April (2024).
Sadly that date came and went. Another month or so passed before information came out that the scope of the update had been increased substantially and it would be delayed for an unknown period of time. At this point the small three person development team communicated quite regularly via a weekly dev' stream, their Discord channel (I don't use Discord so I'm going off of what others have told me here), then occasionally on their subreddit and also Steam.
Leading up to Gamescom 2024 the team announced that they would be postponing the dev' steams until after the update was live. Surely this meant that the update was nearing release, right? Unfortunately no. A month passed before the art developer made a post on Reddit highlighting some of the assets and maps that they had been working on. As expected the Reddit community wasn't very receptive in response. Another month later the art developer made a post again highlighting stuff that he was doing but the community again was in disbelief that an update was ever going to happen.
Since then it's been mostly radio silence outside of some very occasional posts on their Discord reassuring people that they are indeed still there, though much of the community has left. The subreddit has very little real activity outside of sour users that no longer play but feel like they have a duty to obsessively post "dead game".
So what is the state of the game now? Despite having received no updates over the last 16 months it's very playable, mostly bug-free, has a myriad of guns, attachments, gadgets, classes, vehicles (land, sea and air) and maps. The gunplay is tight, movement is fast, the gameplay overall is very satisfying and even better if you have a squad that communicates well. What's left of the community (disregarding the non-playing Reddit users) is generally quite nice compared to the vast majority of FPS communities. I play as a combat medic so I'm often reviving/bandaging people and am surprised by just how thankful people are over proximity chat when I save them... many whom have expressed their rather explicit love for my deft healing hands. The game also runs exceptionally well even with a full 254 person server worth of chaos happening on the most ancient, potato-like computers.
Naturally the user count has steadily declined over the year as games like this often live and die by their update schedule, doubly so when the game is in Early Access. Suffice to say that you will only find full 128/254 populated servers during prime time in NA and EU. CN/JP/AU/SA servers are all but dead I'm told. Though I've spoken to some players from those regions that say they are able to play fairly well on either NA or EU servers, but I should mention that servers have a hard 200ms ping limit.
Update or not I feel like the games population will last for the rest of this year but not much beyond that, though I hope I'm wrong. As of now we have a pretty solid core of regular players on the Hardcore server (a 64v64 server with more realistic damage/settings) so who knows. Sometimes a relatively small group of dedicated players can keep a game going far beyond what one would reasonably expect.
Again I'm not going to say whether I recommend the game or not, but if it's something you're interested then proceed with caution especially if you're not from the NA or EU regions. Ultimately I can't complain much after having gotten 500+ hours of fun from a $10 purchase.
My final thought is that it's quite perplexing how the developers managed to capture lightning in a bottle and then allowed the scope-creep of a single update to grow so much that the game has effectively been abandoned.
Thanks for the post, I rememeber Battlebit and I thought it looked really fun when it came out, I really wished it success. It's really sad to hear about the update situation, it feels like there's more to it that they had scope creep. Something more than just a code issue, like maybe a team issue or something.
You're welcome. From everything I've read people have speculated that it could be a combination of scope creep and the main developers (the sole programmer) reluctance to let anyone else work with/on his code. It has been claimed that he previously stated it would take far too long to onboard another programmer and get them up to speed to work on what he has already done. This has lead others to assume his code is a mess of spaghetti without any descriptive commenting. Again this is all second hand information that I've heard on Reddit and from players in game so I can't verify those claims.
Initially this big update was mainly supposed to focus on a major overhaul of the audio/sounds and their implementation but it has certainly grown substantially since then. Someone had compiled a document with sources on all the confirmed changes made so far.
I was a big Battlefield fan for many years, but left it at 2042 (never bought that one). I really wanted to try Battlebit, but there has been no support for Linux + their anti cheat of choice. Sorry to hear that the community is dwindling and the devs don't really update.
Official native Linux support would be very welcome but judging by how they've handled the game that's sadly never going to happen. For what it's worth the game has worked without issue for me via Proton 9. Also not a fan of their usage of EAC either though at least on Linux as far as I've read it's run only in user space and not granted kernel level access.
Oh, so it actually works? I thought it didn't. I might give this a try, then.
Yep it does. Initially I had a few problems with Proton 8 but Experimental worked fine at the time. Since Proton 9 was released its been smooth sailing. Steam should install Proton EasyAntiCheat Runtime automatically when you launch the game but sometimes it doesn't for whatever reason; if you have a problem launching the game then search for it in the Tools category of your Steam library and install manually.
I played through Mass Effect for probably the 15th time. This game never gets old to me, I just love it so much! Over time the cracks have shown a bit (like some shallow writing in some places and how it can be hard to be renegade without being a super racist), but it’s just such a good playthrough every time! I did start ME2 this weekend as well. I’ve also played that about 15 times. I plan on bringing this save file into ME3, which I’ve only played twice and both times were back when it came out, so I’m excited to play it again!
I also picked up Tokyo Xtreme Racer after a dozen of my car friends did. It’s fun to build and customize your cars. The racing can be meh sometimes but also incredible in close battles. Ultimately I enjoy it more as a car collector game, but I can’t deny it’s worth the $30 right now. I’m excited to see what content comes for it in the future, but I’ve only scratched the surface so far in what is already in the game.
My one complaint is that after 4 hours, I just barely got my second car. Unless battle payouts increase, this might be pretty grindy.
Also, the Oblivion remake has a showcase tomorrow and is likely dropping tomorrow, so I’m sure I’ll play that this week. I also got into the Marathon alpha, which starts on Wednesday.
I'm planning to play the Mass Effect trilogy soon for the first time. So, as a huge ME fan, I'd like to ask you: should I play the originals or the Legendary Edition? I haven't been able to find a clear answer to this online. I know sometimes the re-releases of games can lose the magic and I'd like to know if that's the case for ME 1+2+3.
Play the legendary edition. It comes with all the DLCs and Mass Effect 1 has a lot of quality of life upgrades. There's no reason to play the originals these days, LE is definitive. At least on PC the LE goes frequently on sale down to like $10. I think it does on console, too, but maybe not as frequently as steam?
Thank you :)
I'm playing a Minecraft mod called Better Than Wolves. I'd heard of it years and years ago, described as an attempt (originating from when the game was still in beta) to add a system of progression to the game, that the author felt was lacking from Mojang's updates (i.e. they didn't think adding wolves to the game had been a good use of time and energy). Other than that, and the knowledge that it was specifically not compatible with any other mods, I didn't know much about it. I also stopped playing Minecraft probably around 2017-ish, so everything added to the game since then seems weird and alien to me, and I honestly don't really have a lot of interest in exploring it.
Recently the YouTube algorithm recommended me a very long, edited video from an apparently-popular Minecraft YouTuber playing through the mod. I was intrigued to find out that this mod I remembered hearing about so long ago is still around, and further so to see it being framed as a mod that makes the game much harder than the vanilla version. It seemed that so much of the game had been changed to lock things behind a very slow and difficult system of progression, which made it difficult even to get past the early game survival stage. I enjoyed the playthrough a lot, and once I realised that the mod depends on a very old version of the game from around the time I stopped playing (and thus I wouldn't be put off by not knowing about more recent things in the game added in vanilla), I felt the urge to try it myself.
I'm absolutely terrible at most games (I have terrible hand-eye co-ordination, my reaction time is awful, and I really don't get much enjoyment out of the real-time-action side of things), so I didn't expect this to go very well - and indeed, I'm struggling greatly at it! Every time you die in this version of the game you get respawned in a semi-random location far away, and you can't view your co-ordinates, so you essentially just have to start again from scratch. Though I thought I'd quickly get frustrated with this and give up, I find myself ever so slowly getting further and further each time, and I find that rewarding despite how stressful it is - in a way I very rarely get from this kind of game. Most of all I enjoy the strategy aspect: of using the very limited time available to gather the bare minimum resources necessary to survive the first nights, scout for locations and landscapes that allow for suitable shelters, set up camp near animals that will provide the resources I need, and slowly start to accumulate tools and resources that allow for longer-term planning. I'm so very far away from getting to the stage of having a permanent base and exploring the mechanisation stage of progression, but I really want to get there!
It's really nice to be playing something outside of my comfort zone - though the launcher helpfully informs me that I've spent almost 24 hours playing the game in total since I started a few days ago, which as a relative non-gamer is pretty horrifying to me how much the time can fly by when playing a game like this!
Picked up Intravenous 2 after watching SsethTzeentach's video on it and being hooked on the idea of a stealth-oriented Hotline Miami. So far I've completed the Intravenous 1 story (the whole first game remastered is available as DLC) on "True" difficulty and this game is just the right amount of brutally unforgiving but tactically rewarding. Like Hotline Miami, death comes extremely quickly (though kevlar and a plate goes a very long way), but visibility and noise are just as powerful as they are compromising, both for stealth and combat. Enemies aren't completely dumb either - bloodstains are suspicious even without bodies, and they eventually notice if patrols they used to cross paths with go missing for too long so there's pressure to act quickly if you do choose to neutralize enemies. There's many approaches to tackling levels so the replay value is pretty huge even if the story itself isn't all that long.
That sounds like my kind of game. The interface reminds me of Door Kickers, which I had a lot of fun playing many years ago.
I decided to fire up Bannerlord again and see what I could accomplish. Last time I played it, I was on my steam deck and didn't really know enough about proton to get the mods I wanted working. As it tends to go, I learned a bit, and then discovered I didn't need to know because proton got the right sort of updates, so I cobbled together a fun pack of a bunch of different things and set to work becoming a bandit lord.
In this run, I am playing as "Pruggnard the Merciless of Clan Shitteeth", a landless gladiator-turned-bandit when it became clear that raiding caravans was where the money was at. The character creator lets you choose teeth, hence the clan name. I began by going after small bands of looters/army deserters out in the periphery, then made my way into the center of the kingdom to do arena fighting. Got lucky and won a sick two hander + a breastplate, and met some folks in the taverns who became companions. Eventually, the arena fighting wasn't generating enough income to maintain my party's expenses, so we ventured out to take on bigger bandit groups/their hideouts.
One of the mods I use is Fourberie, which lets you have deeper interaction with the unsavory elements of the game. I struck up a relationship with a bandit hideout and did some trading, of loot and prisoners, then decided I did not need them and annihilated their hideout. That got me a sizeable chunk of change, so I hired on some better troops, and decided I'd try to go after a caravan to test their strength. There's a kingdom in the game, Vlandia, styled off the Normans, who at one point tried to siege one of the towns I was doing arena fighting in, so I figured I'd go after one of their caravans. As it so happened, a silversmith's caravan was making its way near where I was, so I chased em down and got to work.
The battle was tough. I'm using mods that introduce a posture system, and discovered much to my chagrin that taking a swing at low posture can absolutely lead to getting dismounted. I swung with a two handed axe, hit a shield, flew from the saddle and rolled along the ground. I still had my weapon, so as I got up I readied myself as three dudes approached with shields and maces. I blocked the first guy, swung, but he blocked with the shield and it knocked the axe from my hands. I drew my sword, deflected two blows, cut one down and then got slapped from the side, which disarmed me again. Walking backward I drew my last weapon, a short and shitty morningstar, and clapped the last two one after the other. As the battle raged I ran to gather my weapons, and hopped on the nearest mount, a pack mule from the caravan. I called my forces to me for protection, sallied forth on the pack mule and won the battle.
That caravan was a big enough haul that I could upgrade just about every aspect of my band, and since doing that made Vlandia an enemy, I decided we'd just keep raiding their caravans to amass a big pile of gold. Another mod lets you get a horse, name it, and develop its skills - I got a Destrier, named him Pifflesnort, and decked him out in scale barding. I got more companions, more troops, and over time built them into an elite force of about a hundred folks. At present, we've gotten enough notoriety that other kingdoms are offering us opportunities at mercenary work/vassalage, and Vlandia is so tired of the caravan raiding they're trying to make peace with me. I've set up camp along a river where their caravans go, usually I can get two in a day.
From here, I think the plan will be to accept one of the offers, accrue some land, and through diplomacy build up a group of loyal nobles. When I've got enough of them, I will declare independence, wage whatever war is necessary to defend it, and then conquer all of Vlandia for little reason beyond petty grievance. Their knights nearly killed my buddy during our caravan raiding, so that means I need to own all of their cities. As well, I shall grow Clan Shitteeth by wooing as many noblewomen as possible, so that my progeny can take up the banner should I fall. Characters age too, so I need to build up a retirement plan regardless.
Our next move is a test. I think my troops are good enough, so I'm gonna see if I can start the land accrual by stealing a Vlandian castle. I found a companion who's good at building siege weapons, and got everybody strapped up after paying to access a royal armory. If I can steal the castle, I can leverage that for a higher position with the kingdoms at war with Vlandia, and begin my journey of vengeance. One day, all the land shall know the brown and yellow banner of Clan Shitteeth.
Awesome writeup! Makes me want to pick up Bannerlord again! Haven't played in probably a year or two so I'd be curious what's been updated/fixed/added.
I played it a lot in the beta (after waiting over a decade for the game) but then I was tired of things constantly changing with all the updates/fixes. So I decided to put it down for a while until things stabilized a bit more, and then just never ended up going back.
But your tale of banditry is making me interested in checking out that mod!
I am excited to continue because the banditry goes way further than I ever expected.
Without spoiling too much: We've set up shop in a ruined castle I've named Scumbag's Repose. I've put ~200 vlandian war prisoners to work in a quarry. We have a "scheme room" and assassins. The northern bandit clans send emissaries for trade. Currently building relations with some gang leaders in the nearby town by doing pit fights. I found an option in a menu that says "Call the Horde". I think my plans will have to adjust a bit lol
I really gotta put in the effort for Bannerlord. I played a whole heap of multiplayer Warband back in the day, but never really touched the single player. That was meant to change when I bought Bannerlord several years ago, but I ended up putting in only a few hours and haven't touched it since then.
If you want to get into the spirit a bit, check out a YouTube channel called Tactical Enlightenment some time. He does lots of gigantic battles with all kinds of demonstrations, with a smattering of historical talk and discussion about various tactical maneuvers. I've been watching through his Peasant Revolt playthrough and it got me trying some super fun stuff in my own battles.
Advance Wars deserves better than the disastrous 1 & 2 Reboot Camp remake it got from WayForward, and I really wanted to like Warside, but this is a game they released for full price (not even an Early Access label) and it lacks about 90% of its promised features. The campaign is awfully written, the game uses licensed music despite it all being dogshit, multiplayer is barebones at best, and the AI is horrifically balanced.
It's sad that Advance Wars By Web is still the gold standard for people who like turn based military combat.
RuneScape: Dragonwilds on the other hand did release in Early Access recently. I was in the closed alpha test a few months ago and (now that I am no longer bound by NDA) I can confirm it's shaping up to be a very good survival sandbox game, similar to the likes of Valheim. At the moment there is about 40 hours of content, but it's still early alpha.
ooh Wow. As an Advance Wars fan, I’m sad to hear that. I wanted to try out the remake. Good think I couldn’t afford a Switch to begin with then.
What is this “Advance Wars By Web” if I may ask?
AWBW is a multiplayer ladder for Advance Wars played in-browser, similar to what Pokemon Showdown is for that series. I'm guessing that because it's non-profit and for a dead franchise, Nintendo allowed it to exist.
All the CO's from 1, 2 and Dual Strike are available, but not tag team battles or Tag Powers (as they utterly break the multiplayer balance.)
(On the subject of Showdown, Nintendo did recently announce a Pokémon battling app for Switch, Android & iOS that could replace it if they went the C&D route.)
I played the demo for Warside a few days before it released and I was hoping the actual product would be a bit more polished, but the day 1 reviews were proof enough that it wasn't. A shame too, since it would have otherwise been the closest clone to Advance Wars in terms of style. Maybe Intelligent Systems will make a sequel for Switch 2 if they decide they want a break from printing money with another Fire Emblem.
I am curious what you thought of Wargroove. I thought it scratched the itch well enough, even if it was not as direct a clone of AW as some other games.
Did you enjoy it? A year ago or so I tried it out and something didn’t feel quite right for me, so I didn’t even get past the first mission. Should I give it another chance and push through the initial stages? In what ways would you say is it different from AW? Is the writing any good?
I liked the writing. It's not like I would play it for the story, but it kept me engaged and wanting to see where it went next. It's cuter and funnier than advanced wars I would say. I enjoyed the game and would recommend it. The big difference I felt was that factions are all identical stat wise, only the commander ability is different.
Tales of Kenzera: ZAU
This was in March’s Humble Choice. I had high expectations for this. I love metroidvanias, and the game starts out strong.
Early on there's a very clear nod to Ori and the Blind Forest, which I interpreted as the devs honoring their inspiration for this game. The game, in narrative, has a sort of overall reverential feel to it. It takes its world and characters seriously in a way that feels earnest but not overdone. The game's color palette is bright and vibrant, and the environmental design is interesting. It's got full voice acting in Kiswahili, and it's got some genuinely interesting design choices.
You have two different masks, Sun and Moon, that you can switch between, each giving you different combat abilities. Furthermore, you start with a double jump and a dash, which is a pretty bold choice for a metroidvania. The genre relies on increasing your traversal abilities over time in order to open up your access to more parts of the map, so giving you lots of movement options upfront (rather than having you unlock them over time) is surprising.
I then unlocked the first ability, and I was impressed with how creative it was:
Minor Ability Spoiler
You can freeze running water.
Unfortunately, this is where the game started to go south for me.
Despite the cool potential of the ability, the game doesn't really do anything too exciting with it. Furthermore, it pretty much completely falls out of the picture by Act 2. There are whole sections of the game where you don't use it once after getting it. It then comes back in Act 3, but in a way that I would consider clumsy.
"Clumsy," in fact, sort of captures the general feel of the game. Movement feels a little clunky. Combat isn't very smooth. The world design, despite looking quite cool visually, feels very uninspired.
There are also lots of little small issues, no one of which is egregious, but altogether add up to significant marks against the game. When you enter a new region, most of it is automatically added to your map. Unfortunately, this means you can't tell which parts you have and haven't already visited (which is a nice quality-of-life feature for metroidvanias). Bafflingly, some of the areas of the zone aren't filled in, which spoils some secrets.
Progression doesn't feel very exciting, as your talent points only increase your combat abilities. The enemies get more numerous and challenging as you go, effectively negating those boosts. Without getting too spoilery on what abilities you unlock, they tend to be more environmental rather than traversal-based. What this means is that you get to new areas not because you have new movement options, but you can now get past very obvious gates that you couldn't pass before.
The game would occasionally eat my inputs. It wasn't often, but it was enough that it was noticeable. Given that metroidvanias are built around precise, fluid movement, even the slightest disruption to that kills the vibe.
I played through the beginning of Act 3, approximately five hours, and I'm making the choice to stop playing. The game simply doesn't excite me, despite the fact that you get what I would consider to be two more (potentially) interesting abilities at the end of Act 2. I think some more polish would have helped make the game a bit nicer to play, but ultimately I think it suffers from being somewhat generically designed. It feels like a simple metroidvania-by-the-numbers and doesn't cash in on the most interesting choices it makes.
I feel bad being this negative about it, because I feel like the game was made with heart. When it opened with the Ori nod, my heart was warmed because that's one of my favorite games of all time. Unfortunately, doing that also invites comparison, and this game doesn't come close to Ori's incredible heights.
I might not play this game after all. I do enough "testing" of flawed metroidvanias already! Thanks for sharing your opinion.
I've been playing No Man's Sky for the last week or so. I know it was a huge deal/controversy when it came out, but I basically missed all that. I only heard of the drama and redemption arc through YouTube video essays later on. I first tried the game a couple years ago, but I had limited hard drive space back then, and the survival crafting loop bothered me at the time, so I bounced off it.
This time the game is grabbing me though. I guess I have more patience for methodically collecting and building things. My job has become heavy on critical thinking and fuzzy requirements lately, and I crave simple, plainly achievable tasks. I've enjoyed slowly learning Gek words, gaining inventory spaces one at a time (which almost doesn't seem worth all the trouble it takes tbh), and coming across new goofy planets. All while watching a low-medium intensity show on my other monitor.
I will say there are some significant friction points though. The mission tracking and POI system doesn't seem to work that well.
Ex. What planet am I supposed to deliver a package to for my mission? Well, go into space, look at the Galaxy Map, find a gift icon which matches the icon next to my mission (which is not a super obvious connection by itself), and go to that system.
Ok I'm in that system. Now what planet do I go to? No indication. The mission text just says go to a planet basically. It doesn't name the planet. After trying to figure it out for 10 minutes, I just say fuck it. I'll explore this system and find something new to do instead of the mission. I take a minute or two to travel to a far off planet in the system. Once I arrive at that planet, I notice that there's a gift icon on my HUD thing. Uhh OK. The gift icon is pointing back to a planet that I was just nearby. So I take a minute or two and retrace my steps back to where I just was.
I land at a little spaceport thing, which has a trade terminal in the middle of it. The gift icon is centered on that terminal. I have the package I'm supposed to deliver in my inventory. I walk over to the terminal and interact with it. I'm allowed to buy or sell things, but there is nothing related to my mission. Ok, I guess I'll find something else to do.
It was only when I tried to do another delivery mission that I realized the issue. The package had been in my starship inventory and not my exosuit inventory. When you land on a space station, that doesn't matter. You can buy and sell stuff from either your exosuit or starship inventory. But when you land on the little spaceport things, your starship inventory is not available at the trade terminal, so the delivery mission step didn't get triggered. At least, I think that's what happened. Maybe I'm wrong.
Anyway, it's a good game when I don't think about it too much.
Love No Man's Sky, my permadeath save is at like 160 hours. It really lends itself to throwing something on a second screen and cycling through trade routes, or mining for thousands of di-hydrogen, or waiting for A/S tier starships to land on a space station so you can buy them and break them down for starship inventory expansions. Before you know it, you'll have 10 storage containers and item teleportation on your freighter, and the game basically turns into creative mode.
Which is nice, because part of why I play is just to explore. I love jumping into a system and seeing that it was discovered 7 years ago by another user. I hope there are people who've jumped into my home system and felt the same way, us coming so close in space and yet so far in time
I started in on Oblivion Remastered (never played the original but heard good things so this was a pleasant surprise), closed my first oblivion gate... Then Expedition 33 landed.
Whoa.
The music. The setting. The acting. The writing. The combat. Holy hell. I'm only 5 hours in, but this might be a masterpiece. If it stays this good all the way through, it's going to be the best game I've played in quite a while. I almost cried during the fucking intro level. What a debut.
Not going to say much more as I think this is one that's worth going into semi-blind. I knew the basic premise before playing and was honestly expecting it to be a little... idk, trite? Wow, was I wrong.
On a tick, I started playing Oddworld Munch's Odyssee - every bit as enjoyable of a puzzle 3D platformer but the combat is a slog. I plan to stick with it but I had to put it down last night.
Also, I beat Halo 4. On my spree with the Master Chief Collection, I finished Halo 4. Not terrible from a gameplay perspective but man, it's cemented itself as my least favorite Halo game. I don't plan to play the newer games but lets see if it falls into a Humble Bundle one day.
Also beat Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney for the first time since I beat it on the DS with the rerelease. I forgot how LONG the fifth case was and it's very much less fun on the AA trilogy. I'm taking a breather before I pick up the second game.
Also playing Cavern Of Dreams, Balatro, Tokyo Xtreme Racer, and Going Under... I've been on a bit of a dopamine hunt regarding what games I'm actively playing though...
Played some Crusader Kings 3 over the weekend for the first time since last year. Wow a lot has changed in that time. Crazy how much they're adding to the game. Tried a couple of saves before I got into a groove again but now I'm conquering northern Europe with my viking army. Started as a small province in Norway, unified the kingdom, and am now expanding into Ireland before tackling the rest of the British Isles. 10/10 for historical accuracy I guess, lol.
Last night I completed Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land for the original Game Boy, played on my Analogue Pocket, mostly via the dock on my TV using an 8bitdo wireless controller. The cart had a dead battery, so a few nights back I finally got around to opening it up and soldering in a 1616 battery holder, so in 30 more years I'll be able to pop in a new battery when this one dies and play through it again! The game was fun, pretty easy and short, though a lot of the boss battles were pretty confusing. Can't remember if I ever beat it as a kid or not.
A few weeks ago I bounced off Metroid II: Return of Samus for original Game Boy - it was pretty great, except for the fact that a Metroidvania without a map is nigh unplayable in 2025. I ordered a 3ds and the remake, Metroid: Samus Returns, and will be playing that next.
Wow! This is so cool! I envy you so much! Was the battery swap difficult? How was the experience playing it on the big TV? Does it have any enhancements to make it look better on a large, modern display? Also, you docked the Analogue Pocket? Wow. I think I remember that it had an HDMI port, right? Is that how it works? Have you also used the device just as is? Is it good? I have so many questions! This totally blew my mind!
Oh, so the 3DS game is a remake of the Game Boy original? I wasn’t aware. I never played the NES and Game Boy entries. I don’t think that I’d enjoy playing them, given how outdated they feel. I did enjoy the GBA entries and Super Metroid though. Those were a lot of fun. Too bad Nintendo won’t make more of them. There probably isn’t a lot of money to be made there, but look at how amazing the sprite art can look in a modern game like Octopath Traveller. It would be so cool if there were more great, pixelated Metroid games out there to play.
😂😂😂 I love your enthusiasm!
Not really! You desolder the tabs holding the old battery to the circuit board and solder in the new holder in its place. My soldering skills are low but I've done it a decent amount over the years. The trickiest part was getting the new holder totally flush with the board, there's just enough room inside the GB case to fit.
Some DMG games have "Super Game Boy" features that make them look a little nicer on a color display, but Land 3 doesn't. The main advantage for me of a setup like this is less eye and hand strain, which is getting to be a real problem for handhelds with less than perfect ergonomics.
Analogue sells (sold?) a dock that breaks out the USB C to HDMI and USB A. Like all of their products it's overpriced and doesn't look or feel nearly as good in person as the renders would lead you to believe, but it gets the job done. Inside the dock is a male USB C connector that inserts into the female connector on the Pocket, so it doesn't feel nice like it would if it used a custom spring pin style connector setup.
The Pocket itself is pretty good - I've got custom OpenFPGA firmware on mine, so I can run hardware emulated ROMs for everything up through the N64. And it's nice to be able to play NES games or whatever on the go - I played through most of Little Samson on a transatlantic flight last year. But for me a bit part of retro gaming is the hardware - if I haven't inserted a cartridge or disc then playing the game loses a lot of its magic. This is an expensive way to feel, lol. Getting lag-free and good-looking output on a modern TV is also a complicated and expensive problem which gets a lot easier with FPGA consoles. So that's why I have the Pocket, and an AVS NES, and a Mister Pi that I don't use much. Year after next I should be moving, and when I do I have big plans to RGB mod a bunch of 80s/90s consoles and get a quality upscaler.
Yup it's a remake, and it's better in every possible way. I think the only people who would enjoy the DMG version are people who loved it as a kid.
Maybe 15 years ago I went through and beat NES Metroid using a guide - I had it as a kid but never beat it. It's a little easier to play today than Metroid 2, but still the GBA remake is high on my list and is probably the definitive way to play that game too. The NES game has things that haven't aged well, like to progress you have to bomb one spot a random wall, and there's no way to know which one.
Never say never! Sometimes Nintendo et al reach deep into the back catalogue. Like, I would have NEVER expected to see Ice Climbers in Smash Bros, or a Survival Kids game as a Switch 2 launch title, but here we are!
Did you gave a favorite 2D Metroid? I had been thinking I'd play Zero Mission next but I'm open to suggestions.
Wow! Thank you for answering all my questions! I’m still so envious that you can afford all that hardware. I sometimes wish I could get a Wii to hack it and make it my GCN/Wii/emulation station. Maybe someday... I can somewhat relate to the desire to want to insert a cartridge or disc. I feel that way about the hardware, and menus, and controllers as well.
I think I would rank the ones that I played thus:
Super > Fusion > Zero Mission, but in reality, they were all great. The difference isn’t that big for me.
I've been a programmer for a long time, and obsessed with video game hardware for even longer. Steady on with the "keep buying, never sell" approach and you too can have a video game collection worth more than your car 🙃 Though a lot of that has to do with pricecharting, prices have gone up a LOT in the last 10 years - retro gaming used to be a relatively cheap hobby.
Thanks, I'll put Fusion and Zero at the top of the list!
The House in Fata Morgana just became free for Crunchyroll subscribers on cell phone. It’s something I have been wanting to play for a while. I’m not done with it but it is very much worth the reputation it has. It’s incredibly beautiful, both in terms of the art and the writing. The English language translation is inspired with very poetic word choice. The soundtrack is incredibly unique and fits the vibes extremely well. The plot is semi-episodic in the way it is presented, and each “episode” is a mixture of beauty and horror with a twist that will surprise you every time. Honestly, I don’t know how to describe any of the plots to anyone because they are actually surprisingly densely told with lots of depth that can’t easily be recapped. I’m not done with it yet but each of them so far has themes of love being twisted and distorted and it’s all very beautifully presented. You really aught to experience it for yourself.
Oh yeah, it’s a visual novel. Probably should have lead with that one.
I picked up Nioh 2 on sale a little while back and have been playing it quite a lot. I'd say it's more or less on par with the first game in terms of my personal enjoyment.
I like the little bits and pieces you get of Japanese history (now with added yokai!), but the way the story is told is a bit confusing at times, with a lot of things happening "off-screen". Reading through the character notes you unlock as you progress helps with that.
In terms of gameplay, it's a very deep game that I've barely scratched the surface of. I'm using a Mage/Ninja playstyle that relies primarily on consumables that recharge when I reach a shrine, it's very effective on regular enemies but can struggle a bit on bosses, particularly ones with high elemental defenses.
I was tossing up between Nioh 2 and Shadow of the Erdtree, and chose Nioh mostly because it was on sale. In general I prefer the Fromsoft Souls formula to the faster and more complex action games that Nioh is closer to, but it's a good time nonetheless. I'm getting close to the end of the story now, and next up will be either Hellblade 2 or 1000 x Resist as I also picked those on sale recently.
Re-playing the Mass Effect trilogy with a new character (new appearance, new class) on the hardest difficulty ("Insanity"). With a difficulty level called "insanity", I expected the combat to be harder, but it's very manageable for me. I just have to watch out not to get one-shot by certain hostiles, really. I'm appreciating that I'm going through the storyline again to get a refresher on the plot elements and game world history. I'm getting a few "oh, so that's what/why that was" moments.
I gave up on Lies of P
I'm at what is probably the last stretch of the game, and there is major mood shift that I really don't enjoy. It doesn't help that the boss is a real PITA: not too hard, but getting hit will apply a strong debuff to your endurance regen, which will impact your dodge and parry, and will make it much more likely to get hit again. So here's what I liked or not up to this point:
I liked:
I disliked:
Overall it's a neat game if you like the genre. I got it on sale and don't regret it.
I'm back to Last Epoch for the 1.2 update.
If you're looking for an ARPG that respects your time and don't consider you brain-dead, Last Epoch might be a good fit. It's not as pretty as Path of Exile 2, not as streamlined as Diablo IV, but it has interesting systems for skills and crafting, and easy respeccing. Not perfect, but priced accordingly, and with a 100% offline mode if you wish. It's even more fun to try your own builds than to follow a guide, as almost everything is viable.
For someone who plays slowly, likes to try multiple alts, and doesn't want to rush to the endgame, it's pretty great. Actually it's my favorite ARPG at the moment, it's just not super polished, and doesn't run very well on the Steam Deck.
This was my biggest problem with the game and everyone online seems to feel the opposite, or that the bosses were not that challenging. I don't mind 2 phases every couple of bosses, but each one ends up being essentially two fights you need to learn movesets for, which takes double the amount of time to get through. I ended up spending more time in these battles than I did exploring the world, which is my favorite part of souls-like games. Definitely a great game, but even from a souls "veteran" I found it really frustrating and still haven't finished it.
I feel similarly about Lies of P. I got to the final boss, gave him about a dozen tries and then decided, "Eh, I've had enough of this game."
I didn't think about it until you mention it here, but almost every boss having multiple phases gets very tedious, ending-up feeling very repetitious in the long run.
It feels like you're pigeon-holed into one playstyle. Maybe that's just me, but I feel like in a Souls game, I can choose to do ranged, magic, several different types of melee and I can focus on a defense style, whether that's getting good at parry, blocking or rolling or even combining all three. I played the original game with Sword and Board, did that most of the second and when I started the third, decided I wanted to get better at something different so went full magic, which is now my favorite playstyle.
In Lies, dodging sucks, there is no magic and no shields, I'm obligated to be good at Parrying and while I can sometimes pull it off in the 30-hours I played, I can't be consistent about it and I find that frustrating.
I sometimes feel bad that I quit right at the final boss, but I just don't feel like doing it. I know I can beat it given enough tries, but the juice doesn't feel worth the squeeze.
The specifics of Lies of P aside, I'm happy to see my last-boss-avoiding brethren so proud and unashamed. I've written about it before - incredibly frustrating lass bosses are such a big design mistake in my opinion. There's no more game after that! I know some people enjoy the challenge in itself, but in a lot of cases they make a lot of people walk away from the game with a bad aftertaste. Is making people feel worse about your game truly worth the inclusion? These days I'm quick to drop the final boss once I realize what's going on.
I've been playing even more Balatro than I usually do. I am having great difficulty clearing orange stake on the spectral deck for some reason - either I mess up or I just get an unlucky boss.
Been playing brotato before bed for the past couple of days.
Started playing Red Dead Redemption 2 for the first time - the beginning of the game is pretty boring in my opinion, but I hope it gets better soon.
The Oblivion remake looks great, and I'm really interested in playing it, but have a whole backlog of other games to play.
I feel you. I'm trying to resist the temptation as well!
All those are great games that you listed! Balatro and Brotato are great for short runs to kill some time, and Red Dead 2 does indeed get better once the game stops holding your hand a bit and lets you (mostly) do as you please.
Thanks! I am mostly able to wait without too much fuss in regards to Oblivion because there seems to be some performance issues with the game (although that can just be poor performance for AMD cards on UE5), but will still wait for some performance patches to be pushed regardless.
And yes that is great. I always hear great things about RDR2 so I'm looking forward to it.
I have been playing Better than Adventure! (an unofficial fork of Minecraft Beta 1.7.3). I'm still in the very early game, but it's oddly refreshing to play a version of Minecraft that poses the question: What if the development had taken a different path? There are some neat QoL additions like built in inventory sorting, and a better unlock progression. But a lot of it feels like old Minecraft. Spam clicking attack, simplified mob drops, and no swimming to name a few. The game visuals have been updated, but they are distinct from modern Minecraft in a way that is difficult to describe. Almost cleaner? 🤷♂️
I picked it up just to kill some time before I participate in the great Tildes Archipelago multiworld, but I think I might continue to play even after that event just to see what more this version has to offer.