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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.
Elden Ring: Nightreign
This game is something. Probably the most divisive FromSoft game in a long time. There are certainly some gripes to be had and I do find merit in most complaints but all of those have some mitigating factor that makes me go "no this is bad but also good actually". However, I do think the game is doing something interesting and I do want to see how it continues to develop.
A strange thing about this game is how the aspects I find interesting are also the things I find frustrating. Both the speed and the length of a run are highlights.
It's fast, movement speed is fast, attack speed is fast, leveling is fast, everything is fucking fast. Night comes fast too, and if you're unaware of what this game is trying to do, think Fortnite or similar where a coming storm is circling closer and closer until it forces you to a certain point on the map where it'll throw a boss at you before the day ends.
This means the tempo of the game feels great, you have to constantly move and think about where to go, what to kill, and how to upgrade. Traversal over the map feels good and sprinting is a mechanic I could get used to in the OG Elden Ring honestly. And while the first few games made me feel very lost, it's already easier (not easy) to assess what I should and shouldn't pick up or take.
The downside to this is that it's fucking fast. The game doesn't let up, you get a very brief moment of respite after defeating the boss of the day before going on to the next day and fights, but the most nerve racking part is the coming storm. It gets smaller at set intervals twice, meaning you have an outer ring, an inner ring, and the evening boss arena. The first interval comes on really quickly, four and a half minutes in, and that means you should've done the things in the outer ring because byebye you can wait until Day 2 to get back to them. My heart is pounding, adrenaline is at a constant peak, and I end up being tired after a run because you need to seriously focus for quite a while bringing me to my next point: Length.
A successful run lasts somewhere between 45 and 55 minutes. That honestly feels pretty good. It feels nice to see progression in a run and become stronger (and actually use that strength, far too many games power you up only to end it right at the best part!) and you get a chance to reach a lot of areas of interest and bosses. Any given run has you kill a dozen or so interesting bosses or miniboss type enemies that feel (mostly) appropriately scaled to three people. The length of a run feels just right as it builds towards Day 3 and the Nightlord.
The downside to this however is twofold: I like starting and quitting when I feel like, not when the game feels like it. If you're in a run in Nightreign you're committed until the end. Just yesterday I had to pick up my wife in about 60-65 minutes and I really contemplated squeezing a run in but I decided against it not knowing how long it would actually take. It's one of the things that made me less inclined to play multiplayer games like League of Legends or ranked Counter Strike because it's difficult to engage with other people when you can't commit to the time required.
Another downside to the length are the actual Nightlords themselves. Souls games have you fight difficult bosses over and over until you defeat them, usually making you run a short distance before trying again at the speed you're comfortable at. Take a break, try again in a minute, the boss will be right behind the fog gate. This is not possible in Nightreign. To get to the Nightlord, the one thing that gates progression, you need to run a three day gauntlet through Limveld taking about 45 minutes every time you do so. This means that losing to a Nightlord is losing that 45 minutes of progression and the next time you can try again is in another 45 minutes. And they're pretty fucking difficult too.
It does make me want to try again though because the "this time I'll make it" energy is strong.
I'm rambling a bit and I can tell my thoughts are sort of all over the place, but I needed to write something about it. The game grips me, but it's frustrating too. It's Elden Ring, but it's not. I'm not sure I will play this for anywhere near the time I put into the original Elden Ring, but we'll see.
Hoo yeah, that's a definite nope from me. I'm the same way and usually I like to and also have time to play games in short bursts. Forcing me to commit is a good way to make me not play; Monster Hunter I always wanted to like, but I had the same issue there where I felt like I was committing to something and my brain just says no.
Every round is on a timer with the exception of the boss fights. This makes every round a fairly consistent 45 minutes max.
Maybe that changes after you best the first night Lord but I haven't managed yet.
That's what I've struggled with the most trying to get into it. I love the idea of the game. I watch a lot of Elden Ring speedruns, randomizer runs, and bingo competitions. It's kind of like they took that and designed a whole game around it.
But the titular night rain adds so much time pressure. I've been playing it solo since I don't have any co-op buddies to play with. And at least in that context it's been too much for my slow STR himbo brain to keep up with on the fly.
When you're struggling in Elden Ring, you can explore, level up, and keep trying until you succeed. By its very design, the game adjusts itself down to your skill level. It feels like Nightreign doesn't afford that same courtesy. I'm hoping someone makes an offline mod that increases the time limit or removes it entirely for solo runs. It would be nice to have the opportunity to explore, practice, and get familiar without the time pressure.
I hadn't thought of that yet, on account of not having gotten past day one. But that is quite the run back to the boss. Seath the Scaleless would be jealous.
On my first ever Dark Souls run, someone messed with the bonfire next to Ornstein and Smough forcing me to run back from the fire keeper at the beginning of Anor Londo. Since it was my first run I didn't know any better. That sucked, Seath didn't even register as bad by then.
But Nightreign is rough in that way. I've lost to one of the Nightlords three times now, every attempt at less than 20% health left. I don't mind particularly much, since the next run is so vastly different due to entirely different item drops, but it never lets me learn the boss well enough and get in the groove to clap it myself should my allies fall.
I'm a consummate solo player but the match making ha m in NR has been working well for me.
Sure playing with friends on coms would be fun and advantageous but give matchmaking a try.
Certainly easier than trying to arrange between everybody's schedules with friends.
My wife and I have been playing games together on the TV, but in a way games aren't often designed for: handing the controller back and forth. While this is weird, we're doing this effectively to play around child care. It means we can all just be in the living room together and whoever happens to have free hands makes progress. This is only suited to games that do not require the player to build up skill at the game itself.
We recently "finished" Stardew Valley this way. By "finished" I mostly mean that we finished the community center, had all level 10 skills, and then got bored of the chores. Without a clear motivating goal and that we'd been starting to ramp up money production it felt like it was becoming too much work. Too many plants to pick, too many animals to pet, but most of all too many production machines.
Yesterday we started Spiritfarer. We didn't look into it at all and it was effectively just a random unplayed thing in my Steam library. It is not what I was expecting from just the name and cover art, but the bit I've played so far is pretty good.
I'm a bit confused by where it's going though. The opening made it sound like I'm supposed to be helping spirits move on, but instead I've got a spirit cruise ship going. I'm up to 4 now with no indication of the "moving on" bits. The gameplay loop feels off because I think the full loop is supposed to involve the spirits being temporary, but they feel so permanent. Especially the first spirit.
As an aside, we'd take recommendations of games that fit this play style. They don't need to be cozy games or anything. Primarily they just need to progress via a combination of out-of-game knowledge and direct in-game upgrades/unlocks. Basically no skill checks or complex new mechanics for which someone missing tutorials would be a problem.
Used to do this a lot with friends back in the day with games where you could die or fail fairly regularly. One person plays until they die or fail a level, then it's the next person's turn. You could easily turn a single-player game into 2+ players easily provided everyone is interested and somewhat comparable in skill. I have fond memories of doing this with games like GTA or platformers like Spyro and Crash Bandicoot. Early fps games were good for this too (the story parts at least).
Nowadays I think roguelikes would work well for this, especially more laid-back ones rather than skill-based ones. My friend and have done this with Slay the Spire and Monster Train before, where one person is actually doing the playing and the other person is backseat deckbuilding and providing opinions. Really changes how you normally play and see things when you have someone else providing commentary.
My wife played this game, I went and asked her: Yeah, this is normal for the start. You need to keep interacting with the spirits in whatever way they encourage and eventually their stories will progress until they begin moving on.
That is a change I would make to this game. I think that one of the early spirits, maybe the first or second, should be close to moving on as soon as being found so that the complete gameplay loop would be fleshed out a bit earlier. It feels odd to have spirits complain about overcrowding before it introduces the mechanism for them to leave.
My wife and I also played Stardew Valley together, though she crushed it as the gardener she is.
If you're feeling a little weird, you both might have a good time with Undertale, too. Battles play like creative arcade shoot em ups and the story is both comical and rich.
Spirit Farer is def the perfect game for this sorta thing. It can at times feel a bit like a slog to get them to move on but once you progress theirs and others story line etc it def does start moving. I've found other cosy type games to be too much effort/upkeep but found Spirit Farer to be a much better balance of doing stuff while progressing to the next achievement as such.
If you find another game similar to Spirit Farer let me know! 😅 I enjoy chill games sometimes but not when they start feeling like chores! 😅
Depending on your level of wanting to chill vs game, I have also really enjoyed the Ori and the blind forest games. Aware these aren't exactly chill but I did find them semi relaxing/not as hard as some others.
I loved Spiritfarer, it definitely has a well balanced pace to it.
Another chill game you might like is Roots of Pacha. It's the same game style as Stardew Valley but without the constant pressure to maximize your time or mini-game frustrations.
My wife and I have finally come to the end of our journey with Blue Prince, "where the story ends". It's clear that there are more puzzles left to go, but getting to where we got to felt a little like having a delicious piece of fruit, but we're starting to gnaw on the rind. For us the remaining bits of flesh aren't worth the effort it'll take to extract them. We may come back to it, but the last puzzle really depended on scouring every surface of every room to find tiny clues in the world, and that was frankly exhausting. All in all a wonderful game, and I appreciate there being explicit offramps for people to take when there's no longer as much joy in continuing.
This week I played the new 2.6 story update for Reverse:1999. In the newly introduced chapter 9, “Folie et Déraison,” our protagonists travel to Tierra Del Fuego, an Argentinian archipelago near the south pole, to investigate a mysterious prison and a blind journalist. Upon completing this chapter of the story, I wrote in a Reddit comment, half-joking, “I don’t know how I’m going to explain to people that my favourite work of postmodern literature is a random story chapter from a year and a half into the lifespan of a Chinese gacha game.”
It may be recency bias, but the more I think about it, the more I think that, as visual novels go, Reverse:1999 often is genuinely that good. When I think about its best chapters, chapter 6, 7 and now 9 (some side stories as well) I think about them in the same terms, and with the same awe, as a Disco Elysium, or 1000xResist, or The Beginner’s Guide: unparalleled narrative triumphs: works of astonishing depth and complexity.
Reverse:1999 analysis (long)
I have occasionally written quite positively about gachas before here on Tildes – Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail. The difference in quality of writing between these games and Reverse is like the difference between a puddle and a rainstorm. In these other games, you can feel the limitations imposed by the format, feel the compromises made to secure the broadest possible audience. Feel the way the characters are objectified in design, made first and foremost as saleable assets. And I’m sure similar compromises have been made in the process of Reverse’s creation, but as a game that is more intentionally niche (i.e. targeted towards queer women), Reverse feels extraordinarily singular, comprehensive, and complete. Like it is almost exactly the work, in all ways and at all times, that the team of artists behind it wanted to make.
In my Steam review of Reverse:1999 I described the story, broadly, as “an urban fantasy story, about the politics of marginalization playing out across time as a supernatural storm unwinds history.” Not to toot my own horn here but this is probably the best possible summary of the game’s story: each chapter, main story or side story, takes the player to a new region, in a new time period during the 20th century, to explore a new story of bigotry and resistance through the eyes of new characters. “Nouvelles et Textes Pour Rien” takes place in a late 20th century residential school, and explores the way that supposedly enlightened liberal regimes enact indoctrination and violence on children to maintain their power. “E Lucevan Le Stelle” takes us to 1914 Vienna, to examine the misogyny and ableism that subtly pervades society, and the way that such marginalization creates violent reactionary movements. “Farewell, Rayashki” shows us a late soviet Siberian mining town, to exhume the ways that so-called socialist regimes, through bureaucracy and indifference, end up crushing (actually communist) communities under a kind of capitalist logic. Reverse 1999 is not consistently brilliant or insightful, with a couple very weak chapters, and a few light, airy, insubstantial romps, but when its writers tackle complex political and philosophical themes, it is usually done with a level of focus, intensity, and depth that I have rarely seen elsewhere in the medium.
Enter Chapter 9, “Folie et Déraison.” Inspired by the works of Foucault (from whose work the title is cribbed), Kafka, Bentham, Deleuze, Artaud, Borges, Bolano, and many of the key figures of the Latin American literary boom, it initially seems that Reverse is attempting to spin too many conceptual plates here. Its main themes are about mental health! Oh, but also, societal power! Oh, but also, art, and family, and personal identity, and performance, and surveillance and what the hell, let’s throw some backrooms and some Alan Wake in there as well. It’s just overloaded with themes and influences. It feels like the work of an excitable student, who read a bunch of philosophy this semester and resolved to cram everything into one magnum opus, except that in Reverse’s case, the opus was actually finished, and also, in the end, it actually works. What unifies everything here is the chapter’s actual central theme: the way we create, and are created by, flawed societal narratives.
I want to take a look at the chapter’s depiction of personal identity, as an entry into discussing this theme. One of our main characters for this chapter, Recoleta, is an aspiring Chilean novelist who belongs to the visceral realism movement – Reverse’s take on Bolano’s infrarealism. She names all of her characters not with actual names, but by their narrative role: “The Bank Clerk,” “The Murdered Donkey Driver,” “The Blind Weaver,” “The Paracausality Researcher.” When criticized for this impulse, she protests:
“Titles and codenames often tell us more about people than their ordinary given names, don’t you think?”
This is an interesting little discussion, because in Reverse, almost every playable character uses a pseudonym. There is a witch-dentist who calls herself Tooth Fairy, a keen-eyed hunter who goes by Argus, an activist who identifies as Kakania (after what Austria is named in the modernist novel The Man Without Qualities: literally, “Shitland”). Recoleta is talking to Sonetto, a young Italian woman who named herself for her love of poetry, and to demonstrate the usefulness of these epithets, Recoleta deduces Sonetto’s nationality, and rambles about the murky history of the sonnet form. In the jail that they visit on their quest, the Jailer is named “Jailer,” the physician “The Physician,” and the head of panopticon surveillance “Aleph” (for the Borges short story “The Aleph,” about a relic that can grant users a complete view of the universe).
While previous Reverse stories have delved into the choosing of a new name, or identity, as a metaphor for queerness or growing up, here, by framing the motif through Recoleta’s authorial perspective, we are encouraged to think about the roles these names play in a narrative. We are told that the Jailer has changed; that she didn't use to go by this name, but has since been subsumed into her role. Aleph feels a compulsive need to constantly answer every question he is posed about the world, to the point it reduces him to a wreck. These are characters who have been consumed by their self-identifications, simplified and erased by them. Conversely, Sonetto is uncomfortable with Recoleta’s deductions about her. Though she may be Italian by birth, she was raised in (groomed by) a residential school, has few discernible ties to her parents’ culture, speaks with an extremely mild accent. And though she does love poetry, she’s as often heard quoting free verse as sonnets. Not to mention the much more prominent aspects of her personality that Recoleta is totally blind to (at least at first); her puppyish loyalty, her unwillingness to challenge authority. Her deep love for the Timekeeper (another lead character, another epithet!)
So in the contrast between Sonetto, and Recoleta’s characters, and the prison guards, the story draws our attention to the way that the identifiers we adopt can be limiting. How they can reduce us to stereotypes in others’ minds and our own; how they can fail to accurately encapsulate our identities and existence.
Every theme, influence, or philosophical diversion “Folie et Déraison” takes is connected by this thread. More than just the typical postmodern “rejection of narratives,” it is a rejection of the rejection of narratives, a kind of audacious meta-postmodernism. It introduces so many philosophers, so many literateurs, to depict not only how their ideas about madness, art, theatre, power, or the infinite are flawed, but also how they continue to affect us and shape us anyway. How, like it or not, we will be judged by our name, identity, and job title. How, like it or not, we still have to engage with the capital-shaped mental healthcare system if we want to be stable and safe. How we always exist under observation and in the act of observing. What I take away from Reverse’s “Folie et Déraison” is a call for responsibility: for greater awareness of the narratives we are adopting and living under (even subversive ones), greater skepticism of the world they lead us to see, greater mitigation of the harm they lead us to do.
But a thousand theatergoers will see a thousand *Hamlets.” What Reverse is doing here is so complex, thoughtful and multi-layered that I have read other equally valid interpretations of the text that focus on other elements and come to other (resonant) conclusions. My interpretation of the chapter is one that probably requires an art degree to come away with, as it's tied up in the subtext that Reverse suggests when it introduces all these influences. Other examinations of the more direct machinations of the plot and characters can and will lead to equally interesting analysis. This is just my takeaway from the story, which feels almost like a bookend on an era of skepticism that has defined art and philosophy for almost a century now – or would feel like that, if it weren’t for the fact that none of you have played it, and it will never become a part of any accepted literary canon.
Regardless of the size of the audience, though, Reverse has done it again, telling yet another dizzying tale with fantastic characters and gripping ideas. And with major story updates coming every 5 weeks or so, another gripping tale is never far away.
In a previous thread, I said some nasty things about the story of the Je’RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I think playing Reverse this week gave me much more insight into why I was so disappointed by that game. Because while Expedition 33’s presentation is best-in-industry, when I compare its narrative to that of more exclusively story-focused games: CRPGs like Disco, walking sims like 1000xResist, VNs like Reverse, Clair Obscur’s story feels a bit shallow, a bit meandering. But maybe that’s an unfair standard to judge any game by. Compared the gaming industry average, Expedition 33 is a narrative masterpiece. But by the standards of niche, highly political story games, of course it doesn’t hold up, and that’s kind of where my bar is at right now; that’s what I’ve been playing a lot of.
Oh uhhh. I also played Everspace 2: Wrath of the Ancients DLC. Don’t really have much to say about this one. ES2 is a great gameplay game, with a wonderfully responsive spaceflight model and great combat-loot loop. And the DLC adds more gameplay, flight, combat, and loot. I recommend Everspace 2. Also, I played it on mute while listening to Roadside Picnic on audiobook, so my apologies to the Everspace 2 writers. The story simply isn’t what I’m here for.
I finally gave in and tried Blue Prince. I really didn't want to like it and tried to avoid it for a while because I don't like rogue likes. And then on Friday I ended up watching a gameplay video and was like "god damn it, I have to play this".
Started playing Friday night, by Sunday I was on Day 26 and got to Room 46 for the first time. First of many I assume as I know there's so much more still to do.
I still dislike the rogue like aspects of the game but can see why it is that way. You couldn't really have this game without them. And it makes such a unique game and experience from other puzzle games. Really interesting.
Final Fantasy VIII I'm full of preferences bordering on hipster (FMA03 > FMA:B) but this is my favorite PS1 entry in the series. I love the Junction system despite the jank, I love the music, I love how the story evolves, I love the magipunk aesthetic, I love the characters, and Triple Triad is the best minigame they've ever made. I'm in the 3rd disk right now manipulating card rules so I can more reliably get some of the rares. (Random was sent from hell) Yes the plot is heavy on exposition, yes it gives you tools to trivialize overland travel way too early, yes it's easy to screw up the difficulty by ignoring good magic or overleveling or mismanaging the GFs, but I firmly believe that what most people complain about is "I played VII first and this is different". Or "these 17 year olds are immature" when "why are adults putting so much responsibility on children" is more appropriate. (Though the answer to that is "because a ton of people died in a major war and there's a missing generation") There's also no silver-haired bishounen bad boy which seems to have held Seifer back even though he was crafted in a lab to be the perfect toxic crush.
I'm gonna talk about Junction specifically because it's often singled out in criticism. If you don't know, summons in FFVIII are called Guardian Forces (GFs) and they are powerful beings that can be bound to a person through "para-magic". This allows the user to channel them in battle and to augment themself by binding specific magic to their stats. That's all called "junctioning". And it's all diagetic! The principle game mechanic is intrinsically woven into the plot. GFs reside in the part of the brain associated with memory, causing amnesia over time. Forgetting and rediscovering the past is a major theme throughout, what with the "flashback" Laguna sequences, the characters digging into their shared background, and
This is main plot that isn't revealed until halfway in so I'll cover it
Sorceress Ultimecia's plan from the future to reach back and compress time by harnessing the power of previous sorceresses. She essentially junctions herself into them to control them. And much later a character is physically bonded to another as an extension of this connection.
I could keep going. This game took some big swings and they aren't all dingers but it will always have a special place in my heart.
I only last played it when it was released so I have a bad memory, but didn't the combat system involve sitting in combat for a really long time spamming spells over and over to level up? Though honestly I don't recall that bothering me too much. The main thing I remember bothering me was when the two main characters met it was really underwhelming, I felt like there should have been more said but I felt like they just went 'oh hi' and everything moved on. Maybe that just stuck with me over the years I could have interpreted it wrong.
That said I thought the graphics were amazing at the time and the opening song was a long time favorite of mine. It is one of the only PS era final fantasy games I actually finished and beat the ultimate weapons on as well, so I can't really complain all that much!
A little backwards. The most efficient way to hoard the best spells for stats was to find a monster that carries it and spam "Draw - Stock" until your party is full. I just did it last night sucking Meltdown out of Gaylas because it gives the best Vitality buff. So it's not "leveling up" (which you actually want to do as little as possible if you're fully taking advantage of the mechanics because enemy stats scale off character level but most of your bonuses come from GF abilities and magic junctions) but it is essentially how you advance your characters so kinda. The other way is farming Cactuars because they give the most AP (GF ability learning points) and very little EXP so you can get the best stuff without turning every monster into a bullet sponge.
As for the meeting, yeah it's a little underwhelming. Makes some sense for Squall because even by that point he's pretty closed-off, emotionally, but the other one should have been more excited. In total fairness there was rather a lot going on.
It's a shame that they scrapped the dual protagonists with two time-gapped stories early on in development. There are remnants of the second protagonist's story but the original plan was to tell both stories alongside each other.
I think they realized they were overly ambitious in the early phases and walked it back. Moving from cartridge to discs gave them a lot of room that they had to get used to with VII but VIII is plenty full with the Laguna snippets it has. Not to mention the challenges with pacing, fleshing out even more characters, and keeping the extra story threads active without players forgetting stuff... I'm happy with the amount of character swapping we got. (I do think they went to the "maybe this character died, remember when we killed a character?" well more than they should have, or they could have committed harder to making it believable. Doesn't really have teeth when their character is still in the menu.)
I remember playing both FF7 and FF8 as a kid and like a lot of people, I preferred FF7 at the time but as an adult, found myself increasingly seeing the flaws in FF7 while appreciating the originality of FF8.
I'd be interested to see what the results would be if you were to show a kid FF7 and FF8 today and asked which they liked better. My money would still be on the kid preferring the familiarity of the story, characters, setting and mechanics in FF7, the bones of which are widely recognisable from countless games before and after it. In contrast, to this day, I can't think of any other game quite like FF8.
7 is more whimsical which can be very endearing. 8's cast is just people but 7 has a talking dog and a weird cat robot and a guy with a machine gun hand and the world's most annoying ninja. Of course it has more appeal for kids.
My brother and I are working on a Balatro save file together and we have gotten the Completionist+ achievement for beating every deck on every difficulty (and we never have to play Black Deck again!!)
The final achievement is Completionist++, which is beating the game on the highest difficulty with each joker, which is grindy and I have reservations about putting that much effort into it before the big update scheduled this year.
I'm still working on the every deck on every difficulty, I'm going across on blue difficulty now on everything. The black deck haunts me, I'm terrified of having to do even more runs with it in the future.
Factorio This is the first game to pry me away from my steam deck in at least a month. Technically the game is supported, but I can't imagine it would be a pleasant experience. I just started over again and slowly making progress. I've got oil and a little train setup to deliver it to my main section of factory. This is usually where the game loses me, but we'll see?
Stardew Valley I think I've reached burn out with this one (again). I finished the community center, got to the island, did everything I wanted to there, have more money than I need...and now what? I could probably get married or something, but idk. I've played this game so many times. I think it'll serve as a good foundation for a save I come back to for Qi challenges and achievements if I ever decide to pursue those.
American Truck Simulator
It's kind of the perfect game for playing while you're passively watching something on TV. I haven't picked up any of the DLC, and I probably won't until east coast states start appearing. California, Nevada, and Arizona are nice and all, but I want to check out familiar cities and highways to see how they compare to the real thing. Let me suffer the bad drivers of Maryland. Let me dodge the highway troopers of Virginia. Let me rumble my way through the bad roads of PA.
With factorio I have found over the years with me that each playthrough I go a little bit farther. Granted I typically am playing with another friend so we tend to push each other when one or the other is having a non productive night and we are a bit shot the other is pushing on while the other might got wack some bugs or do a little fun side project.
If you think of it like a rogue like game you can think of the blueprints as the permanent progress you make on it. That blueprint book becomes your ticket into going farther and farther. I believe at some point the factory games become very tedious making new recipes and feel like chores that you can solve only with a blueprint. There are only so many times to put goods a b c and d together to make X or resource chains before the problem feels very similar.
The problems shift become finding methods to quickly lay down factories that can take in items without putting too much manual strain on yourself and getting good blueprints that help do that can really make the game fun to play.
I don't typically like to get blueprints books online but without fail I will get the belt balancer book that is floating out there, it's probably unnecessary but I get a lot of joy putting down those various belt balancers depending what I have going on and they are hypnotic to watch. I also will look for an easy to use train system as well, generally one that has a stacker, some intersections, some blank stations, and some straight pieces with the power and signals on them. I did the work way back to understand the signals but I really like the beautiful intersections people have made as well as solving having your tracks tiling properly already to save time.
For your own build it is very fun to try to get a good "mall" blueprint that will make all the early to mid game items. This helps each playthrough that you do as instead of building the same factories over and over again you can just slap down your mall. I have this gigantic thing called "The FUCKING mall" that has most everything in it, but it has many, what I like to call "random unspecific errors" in it that we have to debug every time.
Another thing to consider is the space age expansion if you don't have that. I felt it really did an amazing job with the problem I mentioned before that building the later recipes all feel a bit tedious as they are the same patterns, new and more ingredients. Space age accelerates the first planet so it feels way less tedious, then you are building a space platform and going to another world. Each world has a different problem to solve with unique recipes that work a bit differently and will be missing a vital resource you'll have to import from one of the others.
A lot of people hated one of the planets when it first came out and I can agree it made me pretty angry how it was set up, but I also found it extremely captivating. In our run we didn't finish off all the planets and didn't make it to the end planet, so we have more to do whenever we go back to it. But i really feel like space age is a perfect addon to the game.
Another thing is how configurable the game is you can take away things that bother you. We had a playthrough where we turned off biter expansion so we didn't have any time pressure to do stuff, if I wanted to build that night I could build instead of running around fixing defenses or needing to secure more resources to keep the ammobelts fed. I've had runs with biters, or runs with the resources set to super huge so you never had to pick up and move your mining so it was a bit more like satisfactory.
Factorio is a really great game so i just like thinking about it a lot, I know it can be a lot and feel like a chore after a bit, but it's a game you can keep going back to over the years and go farther and farther the more you learn each playthrough.
This is true. Honestly once you start mastering sections of the game, there's a lot less to do with them in subsequent play throughs and that's what motivates me to jump into the next level of tech. Like over the weekend I setup the basics of the red/green research factories and because I've done it so many times there wasn't that much to debug, which is what pushed me to start messing with oil and trains. Which will undoubtedly be incredibly bug-filled, which means more fun :D
I may also spend some time getting comfortable with blue prints. In a previous play through I was following along a "Let's Play" and used their blueprint pack and that really sucked the fun out of it. Might be fun to see if I can come up with my own blueprints that optimize my existing builds.
Yes, 100% I have many fond memories of different blueprints I've made and used over the years even though I know they aren't that great. It is hard to balance because I learned a lot of neat compact building techniques from watching different youtube channels over the years and they are real nice to add to the design arsenal.
It's reallly nice to just start your own blueprint book and slowly add in things, your red science layyout, your belt layout, or early mall etc. I've had the same blueprint book for a few years now I just keep around between playthroughs. It's nice to crack it open and take a look at how they changed over time or ones I improved on. I don't know that I can ever in one session of playing the game do it all, it's more like each time I feel like playing for a bit I can tackle a new chunk of the game while using the old ones I have going.
Our best blueprint we had done in vanilla I think was a train artillery base. When busting into new areas we'd just place the train track straight till we got near the bugs then cap it off with the station. It would have construction trains show up automatically with some bots to build out the base with flamers and defenses around it, then when constructed it would request some artillery shells which would get dropped in and start firing on the surrounding place. A small artillery shell train would keep it filled up to keep shooting until everything was dead, with enough flamers aorund thee walled off base to keep it alive while they were shooting. It was super awesome and fun to expand with, felt like a huge design success. Though, when we went to play space age we also couldn't remember how it worked heh
The only blueprints I let myself bring in the games were balancers, but I completely agree that finding the solutions yourself adds so much to the game!
I'm not great at it, but loved playing through with friends when I could. When I'm by myself, I tend to play rail world settings, but I haven't actually started playing again after getting Space Age (besides a <1 hour save that I don't count). I have small kids and when I get sucked in to Factorio I want to play for more than 10-20 minutes at a time, so I'll probably be waiting for a long while to play it. Thankfully, Factorio runs on just about anything and my aging laptop handles it just fine. Maybe one day I'll go back and finish that Bobs + Angels run. I did try a py mods run for fun one time but the graphics packs actually pushed my older computer a little bit and I didn't like waiting ~5-6 minutes for the game to boot up
Very nice, enjoy the time with the kids! I found my longer gaming sessions came back to me as they got a bit older. They are in middle and early high school now for me, and they have very firm ideas about what they want to do on their own time now, so freed up more gaming, which ironically I miss some of the time doing stuff with them already!
I've definitely tried to enjoy the time I have. I'm very fortunate to be able to work from home and have a flexible schedule, which allows me to get the extra time with them during the day that I wouldn't otherwise have. When they are a bit older to start introducing them to games and be able to share some with them. Factorio will definitely be on that list, the factory must grow after all, so I'll probably need to have more kids to help expand the factory!
Once they're older and having their own things, I'm thinking gaming is probably going to be an infrequent thing on my end. I love playing video games, but after 8-9 hours in front of a screen for work, I tend to want to unwind with a book or doing something physical.
Are you playing American Truck Simulator with a wheel by chance?
It's the only time I allowed myself to listen to ad radio. Don't tell anyone, but I sorta liked it
I'm not, but I do have one from when I was really into Farming Simulator, which I believe shares some of the same basic set of online radio stations, so I know what you're talking about! I got into a lot of music I otherwise wouldn't have heard of. Partially because the music was a really nice blend of US/Canada/European pop/rock, so I got exposure to a lot of bands that aren't very big in the US (Slade being my absolute favorite). I also don't really mind the ads because they at least seem earnest? Like it was mostly ads for Truck Sim convoys, RP Farming Sim servers, streamers, podcasts, etc. It wasn't a constant bombardment of ads for massive corporations.
I wouldn't mind trying Truck Sim with the wheel sometime though. Right now it's just more convenient to play it on my steamdeck.
I'm winding down on blue prince, there is a lot more to discover but I haven't been clicking the button to start the game up lately, but I also doubt it is going to leave my desktop for a long while as I want to discover more of what it has to offer.
I had been having a huge itch to play a turn based tactics game and was searching around for a bit. I had found troubleshooter, abandoned children. People wrote amazing things about the game so I was hopeful, however, I just couldn't make it far. I am probably a bit of a picky snob when it comes to game presentation and while the graphics were fine, I really didn't like the aesthetics of the first few characters you meet, and the way the menu are organized drive me crazy. The story did not grip me at all right off. I typically don't like the genera it is in, which didn't hlep too much.
Another thing is the menu system just felt like a lot of text put into text boxes, with as much configuration sa there was going on there isn't a lot of UI work to organize and present it, which really is fine but I have come to learn that while I love the IDEA of building RPG characters I find that I get overwhelmed hunting down synergies which can turn me off.
The final nail in the coffin for me was animation speeds. It is a pet peeve of mine that I like the characters to move and animate quickly in a turn based game or I get frustrated. XCOM is very guilty of this crime as well, and I'm one to watch cinematic shots all day long, just I don't like when repetitive buff applications feel like a chore or movement skills take too long to settle down before I can click the next thing. In a way I really like to play turn based games by feel where I don't have to always hunt for a perfect play but just generally keep the wall moving forward.
A good example of that is gears of wars tactics. I really ended up loving that game and was upset there wasn't going to be a sequel, there were very obvious issues as the game progressed and with the progression system, but the presentation and pace of playing was amazing. I loved how they were able to combine the enemy turn into simultaneous turns so that when you were rushed by 10 guys they would all run at the same time and your guys would open up on them together. You are still resolving everything turn based but it is quick and really cool feeling. Just avoiding that cycle of camera moves to enemy, enemy pauses, casts a buff where he points at one of his other guys, camera pans to him, other guy puts hands up like yey, pan back to enemy, enemy moves somewhere, pauses, shoots, camera snaps to your char, damage reaction, back to enemy, enemy pauses, camera grinds and pans to the next guy. So much better when the turn is 10 guys rushing you and you fire away into them.
Ok so with that out of the way I landed on rogue trader. I had no clue it was co op, so bonus, we both got it and into co op we go. This was exactly what I was going for. There is such a well polished turn based game under here I had no clue. It feels very turn based tactics with a lot of character building. The effects are great, the animation speed/time is good. It bunches up groups of enemies to move and act at once to speed it up, all th things I was complaining about.
It has an interesting take on npc vendors in RPGs which I realize that I often dislike. NPC stores are not often fun, selling my stuff feels tedious, and you are never well compensated for it. Usually I just look at the expensive stuff in the stores when I get to a town and forget about them, never coming back because I can't afford it now, and other better stuff drops in the combat areas as you forward. The way rogue trader handles it is you build 'profit factor' through the rpg part with other chars, and you can get anything that is up to your profit factor in the trade window, simple. You have to build faction by selling the junk you get in game, which is auto sorted into cargo you just sell for faction rank. So rank up, build overall profit factor, here are all your cool new items.
I just got into the ship combat which on initial take is really cool. I don't know if anybody in boardgame space has played the xwing or wings of glory but the idea feels somewhat similar to that, you are always in motion and depending how fast you are going is how much you can turn. I believe wings of glory had a small PC version made at some point that I had a pretty good time with. This is a little take on it with their own flavor and honestly I really look forward to spending a bit more time with it.
Right now am somewhere in act 2 as the game is opening up. I will say I have a bit of level up fatigue, there are a lot of abilities to pick from and finding synergies takes a lot of memorization from what I had already picked. I wish they had a slightly different method to display the abilities to pick from. But this is a very minor complaint. Overall am loving the game and thinking about grabbing both DLC when the new one comes out soon.
I'm playing through the Danganronpa series (Japanese language). These are novel/mystery games each revolving around a group of students forced to play a death game in which the only way to escape is to murder another participant and not be identified in the subsequent 'classroom trial' attended by all surviving participants. At the end of the trial, the participants vote on who they think the murderer is. If they're right, the murderer is executed. If they're wrong, the murderer is allowed to escape the game and everyone else is executed.
The first game was a lot of fun and feels very tightly scoped at about 20 hours.
Although I ended up playing them in reverse order, I can now see that Rain Code was intended as a kind of spiritual sequel to this series with the same setup / investigation / mystery solving gameplay loop and similar minigame mechanics. Although I'm not the biggest fan of the fiddly action minigames in Danganronpa (the rhythm game in particular is kind of awful and doesn't fit well with the adventure/mystery genre of the game), I definitely prefer the classroom trial to the equivalent mystery labyrinth section in Rain Code. It's a lot more interesting to watch the whole cast argue about the mystery and clash over their different personalities / priorities than it is to just keep running down empty corridors, and the conclusion drawn from each phase immediately leading into the next debated point creates a much better flow for the player to follow.
The other obvious comparison is to Ace Attorney which has a similar three phase gameplay loop, but in practice it feels quite different to play. The game usually only gives you 3-5 different pieces of evidence to choose from in any particular phase (whereas you always have your entire giant inventory to consider in Ace Attorney) and if you just wait for everyone else to speak first, you'll usually get a pretty big hint about the right choice, so the puzzle aspect is a lot easier. Every phase in the trial is also on a timer and has an action element, so often your focus is more on actually inputting the answer than identifying it. Finally, rather than debating directly against a prosecutor, the format of the trial is more like a Socratic dialogue where all participants (other than the culprit) are trying to reach the truth and the judge already knows whodunnit. It's a bit of a subtle difference since the characters are still constantly arguing, but it feels qualitatively different to focusing squarely on proving your client didn't do it and just incidentally working out who the culprit is.
Visually, although there are some janky bits like the first person exploration segments where you walk around school, the Paper Mario-esque 'pop up book' aesthetic used for the characters and each room still looks great.
Storywise, the writing for the cases is pretty solid, with many of them seeming kind of impenetrable at first but all of them actually being pretty simple once explained. I'm a bit divided on the overarching story as it relies heavily on several elements which aren't fully explained, but I'm conscious this is just the first game, so I'll reserve judgement on that until I've played the others.
I'm currently playing the second game which is also great so far. It feels like a proper sequel which keeps and expands on all of the gameplay elements from the first game while also introducing new elements.
It really feels like they're incentivising players to engage more with the game (without punishing people who just want to do the core content), with stuff like the virtual pet, hidden Monokumas to find by looking around the environment and extra scenes you can unlock if you just talk to people and happen to have the right items. The decision to give you XP for doing anything (examining stuff, running around, talking to people) is also a great step in the same direction. For example, you can still fast travel just like in the first game, but I find myself not using it anymore since you get XP and level up your pet if you just run everywhere.
The story seems promising so far and looks like it might answer some of the threads left over from the first game. I particularly like how the characters from the first game are being handled. When a series has a protagonist from an earlier instalment show up in a sequel, it's often difficult to avoid having them overshadow the new protagonist since players are already attached to the earlier protagonist and their story, but the path they've gone down here addresses that issue without rendering what was built up in the first game meaningless. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.
This week we played the first person puzzle game Blue Prince for our podcast on roguelike games
Overall we really liked it! Very innovative merging of old school point-and-click adventure games with deckbuilding randomization mechanics. I think if you’re remotely interested in either, you’ll have a lot of fun with Blue Prince.
My main criticisms are twofold: RNG and note taking. I think the complaints about the games RNG are valid. I tested some nexus mods that give you a bit of help with rerolls and it helped immensely. You can bend the randomization to your will a little bit, but I don’t think you’re given enough meta progression tools to counter it.
A major part of the game is taking notes yourself in an actual physical real world notebook. This is fun to compare notes with others, but if you think you have a solution to something and it turns out wrong, it could be days until you find out by either someone else telling you or looking up the answer in the wiki.
The Outer Wilds has a genius system of in-game reference manual design that helps to keep your focus and guide you along the main quest and story. If something like that existed for Blue Prince, it would help me a ton. My podcast cohosts had no problem with many of the puzzles, so it’s likely a me thing, though.
In the end, I had a great time with Blue Prince. It definitely plays better as a “two brain game” where you can turn your steam deck screen to the person next to you on the voice and ask “what is this painting?” I like the cutscenes, art direction, and narrative a lot. I just sort of wish there was more of it.
I’m excited to see devs take this formula of randomized building design and apply it to other genres like survival horror or classic dungeon crawls like Legend of Grimrock. I think there’s a lot of potential to run with the formula and open up new gameplay styles from this, so kudos to Blue Prince for innovating it!
Oblivion Remaster: I'm cheesing my way to full chameleon Glass with sigil stones! I'll have a backup set, too, but just had to do it for no reason.
The Exit 8: I watched Game Grumps play this last night after going back to see where they are these days. It looked like a fascinating game for $4, and it's definitely been worth that. After beating it it teases you to look for the rest of the anomalies with a banner that says how many you have left, and it's pretty fun. The setting stresses me out something bad, but that makes it sorta fun in an edgy, creepy way. I watched GG play the follow-up, Platform 8, and bought that as well, but haven't started it yet. It's more... obvious, and problem solvy from what I saw.
Aotenjo: Inifinite Hands is making sense now! You start with a base amount of combos for your starting selection, unlock more, they synergize with your gadgets and totems and numbers go up. It's pretty simple once learned, and just sorta clicked eventually. At $10, I'd recommend it.
Tiny update for a cool game: HardAF
I saw an ad for it on Reddit and it looked like some weird cross of Super Meatboy and Celeste. You don't run and jump as far as Meatboy, but you have a dash, and really well-balanced jump/dash mechanics with intricate puzzles. The premise is simple: Black map, you die a bunch, and expose the level in your blood. It's a cheeky little game that doesn't take itself too seriously, but tickles the same parts of my brain games like Action Henk, Super MeatBoy and Celeste do.
I'm still playing Pokémon Conquest, bit by bit, after starting it to end the Backlog Burner. The very beginning was rough, but once I got some more freedom and some kingdoms under my belt, it feels less... drudgy, I guess? Still not 100% my cup of tea, but the gameplay is intriguing enough since I don't play any other strategy games. Though I definitely look at guides regarding links way too much already...
I'm thinking of resetting to re-battle the Bug-type kingdom so I can add a warrior with a Magikarp to the party. Battling kingdoms is the best way to raise the links, and this one is fairly easy. The sooner that thing can evolve the better.
Update: decided to redo it. Went even better this time (Starly evolved and can now use a flying-type move!), and also, it is hilarious to see someone say a dramatic line like "Victory is at hand!" followed by Magikarp splashing in the water far away from the rest of the battle.
Still playing Shining Force 3: Scenario 1 on a Saturn emulator and loving the simplicity of it. Very happy that the community translated scenarios 2 and 3.
Also started Red Dead Redemption 2 with my wife. It's alright so far but I always feel like dramatic, high budget games feel so phony. So much of the graphics, mechanics and presentation is aimed at making it look more like a film but they fail so easily and obviously.
Jump King
Continued from the Backlog Bingo and finished the base game with 10 hours on my file. The last chunk of the game (Chapel upward) is pretty straightforward after all the prior experience needed to reach that point, so the middle chunk felt like the biggest skill check with those small roof tiles and shifting winds areas. Mostly yeah it's figuring out where you can stand to safely max jump without worry to minimize the amount of effort you need to do properly timed jumps and muscle memory for everything else. Figure I should get through more of my library before jumping back into the expansions.
Clam Man 2: Open Mic
Demo prologue for a Disco Elysium style game (still need to play the OG), except this is about an office worker who found a new stand-up comedy club beneath the office and decided to join in. The ending point for the demo is finding someone to spread the news about the opening and having at least 3 jokes ready to perform at night, so you're free to waltz around the neighborhood for sidequests as inspiration for jokes. Your coworker is feeling down, so you can insist on getting some star stickers to cheer her up. Your houseplant needs feeding so you're gonna have to head to your fridge to settle the fate of the food groups living within (or completely botch the roll like I did). This divorced father hiding in a mailbox is desperately asking you to lie to his daughter because he gave a fake address and is scared to admit he isn't doing as well as he said he was. Went Assertion/Improv for my character build, thought it was a nice hour-ish experience. Turns out I do have the first game from an itch bundle (albeit it's a point-and-click instead), so I have that to look forward to after the Next Fest next week.
Rogue Genesia
The Survivor-like with a Slay the Spire map (and another mode for survival). There is so much grind here: achievements and challenges to unlock new items, random equipment loot that carries over between runs, and a ton of macro-currency to spend on the permabuff shop or upgrading said equipment. There's always that sense that you can do another run to upgrade another thing and I need to stop because I don't even like Survivor-likes that much besides as a mindless podcast game and especially because the runs here take a while. The base power and power multiplier stats are generally useless except on challenge runs with rarity-limited items because there's a card that converts max hp into way more damage than that, or a synergy that converts defense into way way more damage than the HP convert card too, or the negative defense build that also does a ton of damage.
Sparked by a comment in the Dying in Tutorials thread, I went on a quest to run Infinity Blade with touch/gesture controls. For those unaware, the infinity blade series was an iOS game series from the 2010s which recently started receiving pc ports by the community.
This left me two options:
moonlight stream to android, and use the touch screen there
running it with steam input overlay and using my steam controller
The first was easy enough. Install it through lutris, and away we go! It's peak mobile gaming. It's a roguelite where you battle your way through a castle to fight the big bad. Runs are short, enemy encounters are even shorter. A great time waster when you had a few moments. You can take a few different plays through the castle, and an alternate path/ending later, and each time a run ends your next of kin (new bloodline) embarks on the same journey 20+ odd years later. So basically, live die repeat. Except with upgraded stats/equipment (and tougher enemies to match)
Gameplay is a little grindy, but not awful. Combat is split between offense, defense, and specials.
Offensively, you swipe like mad when you get an opening. You can perform combos (sequential swipes in specific directions) to deal extra damage. Certain weapons have an elemental affinity that do more or less damage depending on the loadout of the enemy. If you dodge/block certain attacks you get a brief moment to perform a stab, which does decent damage and opens them up for a more attacks.
Defensively, you have parry, dodge, block. To keep you from getting good at and cheesing one thing, some attacks are immune to one or two defensive strategies. Dodge is directional, left or right, and directionality matters. Parry let's you block weapon attacks by swiping towards their attack (so if their attack is an overhead swing, you swipe upwards; if attacking left to right you swipe right to left). Blocking is the simplest. Just press and hold the shield button and the attack chews up some of the shields durability. Defensively counter the last attack in an attack sequence and you'll be rewarded with a "break" which is a window to beat the crap out of the enemy.
Specials are a stun attack and magic. They each run on a meter that fills up over combat. Stun attack just stops whatever the enemy is doing and does damage + stuns them so you have a window to do more damage. Magic can be offensive or defensive, and requires you draw a rune on the screen matching what you want to do. Enemy attacks can interrupt magic, so you have to carefully time it - be quick or be dead.
Which is all a long way of saying why I wanted to get touch/gesture controls working. The ports do have key mappings for these things, but then it becomes more like dance dance revolution. It just doesn't play the same.
Tangent on setup
Installing it with lutris was straight forward, and moonlight + android allowed me to play the game in all its former glory. Video/input latency made an already input sensitive game just that much harder, but it's playable. Just think of it like hard mode, where you have specific windows to execute in.Getting it to work with the steam controller was a little harder, mostly because it took a little time to get the input overlay working and then configuring the controller. I found using
lutris -b <gameid> <output file>to generate a launch script and adding that to steam was the fix to get the overlay working (which is crucial to getting a tight feedback loop when configuring the controller). I think my config is a bit janky, but perfectly playable. I'm happy with how it worked out.Soo much so, that I decided to try a bonus round: steamlink (hardware) + moonlight + virtualhere + steam controller. Which was a small challenge. I've gotten the virtualhere to work with the moonlight + steam controller in the past, but the latency was palpable. Long debugging story short, what I ended up with, was contacting virtualhere support for an updated binary, as the steamlink ships one that's two years old, as well as playing with the niceness of virtualhere client on the sunshine host. It's now on par with playing on android, there's latency, but soo much less.
The slightly longer version is you need to edit usb_sharing.sh to actual commit the virtual here license to the config file, remove the old file, run a steam stream from a Windows host to get the license, then copy the invokation from usb_sharing.sh to moonlight.sh, and manual add address of the virtual here server (ip of the steamlink) in the virtualhere client on the sunshine host. Oh, and if you update the binary, you just replace /home/steam/bin/vhusbdarmsl via ssh.
So I did take the alternate play hinted in the Dying in Tutorials thread, and it's actually IMO a better way to play the game (at least initially). The exp and money rewards start out much better, which sets you up nicely when you want to return to the main mode (which you need to do at some point to explore the alternate path/ending). So all in all, a solid game for its time and different (and enjoyable) input scheme from most games currently available. In the future, I'll probably get around to playing through Infinity Blade II
Elden Ring: Nightreign (PC):
Was very skeptical of this game; I don't have a gaming group and the caveats I've seen regarding PUGs vs. Comps made me worried. Even the premise was a bit iffy. I haven't played any extraction shooters (except Helldivers), Fortnite, etc.
But about 8 hours in and this really is delivering for me. It feels like WoW 5 Man PUGs [positive] in Elden Ring. Even more niche, it reminds me of doing timed Baron runs in Strat UD in Vanilla WoW. There's a clear timer, some difficult content, and coordination/comms are up to you. But the improvised, seat-of-your-pants, pedal to the metal speed is perfect for me.
Yes I was lost for my first 5 hours. But after spending on time looking at maps and just exposing myself to the map through runs it starts coming together. Honestly, not having comms is probably a good idea. I can't imagine how toxic this game could be if comms were built in. But if someone is PUGing, they should accept that they are going to be playing with other players in their first 5 hours.
On pace. I went in ready to go fast and while the heart was into it, the mind wasn't. Learning the basic routes just takes time. Once navigating the map becomes comfortable you're then on to figuring out how you are trying to learn the types of locations that populate the map. Which are beneficial, which aren't? What sorts of objective should you have that the group might not be thinking about? Eventually that kicks in, and you've also picked up the intricacies of whatever character you're playing. At that point you're really prepared to think about time.
So playing with PUGs. Someone needs to take the lead. And without voice the only way you really direct everyone is with a map pin. An important aspect of this is that you can put your pin on someone else's. This makes it white and much more obvious to the team that there is a consensus direction. Once you get familiar with the timing of the game use this to provide support with the leader. I try to pin something early, this will help you see if anyone else is looking at the map and supplying their own recommendation or agreeing with yours. As someone who has PUGed in MMOs will know, this is a critical method of communication in this type of game.
And this game is pretty hard. I fear this might feel like a brick wall is someone doesn't have either Elden Ring experience or a lot of patience.
I'm a big fan. 8/10 after 8 hours.