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What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
I've been playing through Golf Story on the Switch for a few weeks now. I think it's a brilliant little game that mixes a classic console golf game with a little linear RPG built in. I'm getting old and think it is nice to know how to complete a task, which thankfully in this game I am usually able to figure things out relatively quickly.
I can see the end coming and I'll be sad to beat it, I think. Next up is A Short Hike in yet another attempt to piss off my young son by playing a game that could be much older than him.
Slowly finishing Blue Prince. Just need Curse Mode, 1 Day, and 1 Hour trophies. I've said it before but this is my GOTY so far.
With the puzzle/detective itch still flaring up I played through The Witness and really enjoyed it. The zen pacing with some properly tricky puzzles later in was very satisfying. Not bothering with finding every hidden little path though.
And on a friend's recommendation I followed that up with The Looker and got a good chuckle. Solid parody experience.
Then The Painscreek Killings! A little pixel-hunting at times but I thought the narrative unfolded at a good pace and in interesting ways. Spooky atmosphere was well-executed. The ending sequence could have been better, being suddenly thrown into things with no guidance didn't land the way I think they hoped it would. And the low-budget jank that was otherwise ignorable became a problem: I wasted a few minutes because the correct thing didn't trigger the first time so I just kept running around. Overall a good time though and I'd recommend it.
And I'm finally getting around to the Outer Wilds DLC. The light puzzles are a nice addition and the other world is a cool concept. Still in the middle of this one but it's a good expansion so far.
Abiotic Factor just had its 1.0 update with an actual ending to the game, so I've been playing that with my brother. Just like the previous major updates that added new areas and story, Deep Field delivers very consistently on fun and appropriately amateur writing (it somehow enhances the experience), rock solid map design (how do they keep adding all these shortcuts everywhere?), and fun new tech to discover and craft, especially with the addition of the enhancement bench which makes lots of old or bad gear relevant again. As far as survival crafting games go, this one has been and still is one of my favorites. The Half Life inspired setting, the writing that never takes itself too seriously, the fun sci-fi tech and anomalous entities, the really good map design (seriously it only gets better as you explore more), and a great sense of progression (though some skills can feel painfully slow to level). Highly recommend this one to anyone that's into the Half Life or SCP theme and survival crafting genre, especially if you have friends or family to play it with.
I gotta jump back in again. I started a new playthrough in Aprilish, hoping it would hit 1.0 in May, but obviously that didn't come to pass. I hit the area just after the Dam before deciding to take a break again and wait for the final part, so I need to jump back in and see how much I remember what I'm doing (my memory is awful).
Really excited to see how things come together with the new area; Hydroplant was ok, the area after didn't seem that interesting, so I'm excited to see if the new area is anymore interesting.
I'm finishing Horizon Zero Dawn in coming days. I did almost 100% run and I'll probably finish the game in around 140 hours mark.
I have played Horizon Zero Dawn before and since I went in completely blind (not even knowing where and when the game is set) I got caught by surprise - the story, characters, bits and pieces to uncover everything - it is superbly executed game.
I wondered what second one (Forbidden West) could bring to the table to still be at least as good as Zero Dawn. And I'm pleasantly surprised as it is very well executed cintinuation of Zero Dawn's story. I recommend olaying the games back-to-back, but be ready for 200+ hours if you do.
They outdid themselves because Forbidden West really feels like the first game didn't even end.
More in the technical side of things - it is action RPG type of game, weapons and skills and their usage are kinda overwhelming, it can be too much to handle. I don't play this type of games much, so I failed to learn all the combos or use all the weapons. I simply found something that worked for me and hacked & slashed (but mostly shot) my way through. I think I may have left 50-75% of possibilities on the table not really using them. But hey, I'm pleased with my gameplay!
The game runs on Steam Deck with heavy compromises. You either set everything to low (basically non-existent shading) or you bump it to kinda medium but you sacrifice framerate. Heavily. I ended up setting the game to kinda medium and enabling FSR, which I didn't have to use for any other game yet. Even in this setup, the game doesn't hit 30fps that often (if even), mostly it is somewhere between 15 and 25fps but can tank even lower here and there. It really is over the Steam Deck's limit but I want to play it and I don't have any other PC capable of vetter than this. Stean says it's not compatible due to peeformance reasons - they are not lying with this one. But if you are like me, I never had high-end PC, more like low to low-middle (meaning 30fps is good enough for me), you may be able to play the game on Steam Deck as it is. You hae been warned though.
Closing thought: Horizon games are a breath of fresh air in today's gaming world. They are mady primarily for Playstation, sold on PC and they run in Linux on handheld PC. There is no third party launcher, no always-online requirement, no login to PSN account, no anti-cheat or anti-pirate security shit - you pay for it, you install it, you play it. What an unbelievabke paradox that the best AAA games (least shitty) on PC would be from console publishers.
Some quick hits:
Point Blank
@Lapbunny recommended this to me over in my Gun4IR topic. It's excellent (thanks Lapbunny!). It's got lots of different shooting minigames -- each one short and simple yet challenging.
The play-pause-play-pause-play cadence of the game works great, because my arm gets frequent rests. When I play other light gun games, I tend to get fatigued easily, in part because I'm out of shape, but also because I'm way too tense when I play because I'm going for pinpoint accuracy and instantaneous reaction times. Point Blank lets me relax in between bouts of tenseness, which I appreciate.
BORE BLASTERS
@Notcoffeetable recommended this to me back in the Steam sale topic in my (ongoing) quest for digging games. (thanks Notcoffeetable!)
I'm happy to report that it fits the bill splendidly! You
digshoot rocks to get resources to let youdig furthershoot rocks better so that you can get more resources! It's the perfect gameplay loop.Donkey Kong Bananza
I'm nearly 400 bananas in, and I'm still loving this game. It's great.
I felt bad for liking it more than Super Mario Odyssey last week. I'd shared that here, but not with my husband (who is also playing the game), and he told me this past week "this is better than Odyssey" (without me saying that first).
So, we're both in alignment on the game. It's excellent.
FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time
Fair warning: this is The Game That Steals Time. If you start it out, it is highly likely that you will sink dozens of hours into it.
I never played the original Fantasy Life, but I watched my husband play the beginnings of this one and ended up buying a second copy of the game for myself.
It's pretty much the ultimate chore game. You have a bunch of different "lives" (professions) you can do, and each one has its own progression, quests, and skill tree.
Choose the life you like and progress in that one.Do all of them at the same time so that instead of progressing on one front, you're progressing on like, twenty different fronts.This makes it feel like a JRPG meant for an ADHD brain.
Oh, and did I mention there's an entire Animal Crossing-style city-building/house-decorating portion of the game too? There's also that.
I'm playing this as my "exercise" game. I have an aerobic step in front of my TV that I just repeatedly step on and off of while playing games, and I also just got Moonlight set up to stream to my treadmill TV, so I can now walk and play this at the same time.
I don't know that I would stick with it if I were just playing it on its ownThat's a lie, I played it for nearly four hours straight on the couch the other day. It's so addictive.Glad to hear you like Bore Blasters! I don't play it often but it's kind of a treat to have when traveling. I appreciate how simple the loop is but the gameplay is pretty tight and well balanced. I'm always excited to reach the bottom of the level on my final fumes of gas and just stall into the goal.
Seeing BORE BLASTERS got me thinking of another game with bore in the title that's very dear to my heart (though I can't quite articulate why), namely Full Bore. It's a puzzle game in which you are a boar, and to solve the puzzles you have to do some digging! Might be something for you if you're on the lookout for digging games.
This looks very cute, and I adore a hidden gem! Thanks for the recommendation. I added it to my wishlist.
Friday or so, I finished Might & Magic 4 - Clouds of Xeen from 1992.
I quite enjoyed it. I had a great time using the physical clue book from 33 years ago to play through the game, making sure I was hitting the markers I need to and getting on my way towards the end of the game. I definitely had to cheese a little bit on the final boss, Lord Xeen, as both him and his pet dragon could one shot half my party. So I ended-up coaxing the dragon around a blind corner where I could step toward it and then my fast characters would have the first move and I could one or two shot it.
For Lord Xeen himself, I was struggling to figure out a method, as he wouldn't come around a corner, yet I knew I could one shot him with the Xeenslayer sword. After futzing about a bit, it occurred to me that I could probably just teleport to him and similarly hit him before he could touch me, so that's exactly what I did, not losing a single party member to death.
I wanted to make sure my party got all the EXP coming to them because I can now move on to Might & Magic 5 - Darkside of Xeen with the same party already at level 16, which should give me a little leg up. That said, since finishing 4 several days ago, between being tired, traveling and being ill (caught a stomach bug, apparently), I haven't felt motivated to actually play it yet. I really very much enjoyed playing 4 and it was just hitting right at the time I started it several weeks ago, but I'm not totally sure I'm ready to jump right in to the next game and might end-up playing something different first. But we'll see, I was definitely losing steam on 4, but each time I picked it back up, I was fully in to it, so I just might need to do the same for the next one.
Motorsport Manager
This game is pretty sweet, I like it a lot. It's got enough engagement that I don't get bored and it's easy enough that I don't feel like my brain is getting fried.
That said, I've found the more I play the more I'm boiling my gameplay down to a bit of a formula, which is making it more boring. It's possible it's because I worked my way to the top of the Euro tournament that it's not so interesting.
I'm torn between a few things:
Not sure yet what I'm going to do, I'm going to a wedding so I've got some time to mull.
Crime Simulator
This is a Playway Games life sim which is like the third game of the same idea (the original two being single player Thief Simulator).
I didn't play Thief simulator, though I think I'd like it! But I got this because it looked pretty funny to play with friends.
It's the lethal company format except a life sim so you know, it's about what you'd expect.
You gotta steal some guy's paintings while he's in the next room and then break his toilet for cash.
It's pretty good! I'd not super recommend it unless you are already into this kinda jank, but my partner and I did have fun staking out houses and throwing stolen shit to each other.
MTG: Edge of Eternities Prerelease (Paper): This weekend the next set Edge of Eternities prereleases were held. Prereleases are some of the most fun I have in the game. Socially people are just there to have fun. While it is a tournament structure, most peopel are learning the new cards and just trying to get their janky pile across the finish line.
For thos unaware, limited formats mean that you are provided with a stack of packs. Everyone is given a fixed amount of time to open their packs, assess what they have, and build a 40 card deck (down from the usual 60 card constructed). This environment allows otherwise unplayable cards to be best card in your deck. This limited format is a major aspect of set balancing, so it's great to see how synergies the designers implemented play out.
Another aspect I was reflecting on is this social structure that is fairly unique in day-to-day life. I'm rarely sat down across from a complete stranger in a head-to-head competitive setting but along with the expectation to make the interaction fun for both of us. I really like navigating the game rules and finding ways to engage my opponent so that we can both be happy with the result of our match. It's also a wondeful place to meet other nerds, because if you share MTG has an interest, you probably share several other interests (video games, anime, general vibes).
Anyway, I did fine? We played 3 matches, each match is best of 3 games. I lost the first match but took 1 win, but drew the other two matches. I was in Dimir (Blue/Black) which is a control archetype in this format. Two games took most of the time. So my game record was 4-5 and a match record of 0-1-2. I think it's a good set and I was happy to participate. While the Universes Beyond stuff might be a good financial move for the game, I ma concerned about longevity and Wizard's losing sight of their own IP. By participating in prerelease for a MTG-ass set, I hope to send the signal that there is a market for Magic to remain Magic.
Trackmania: I've owned Trackmania for a while but never installed it. And damn is it a game for me, I played about an hour or two and really love the iterative loop of improving ones time on the tracks. It will likely become a standard game for me.
He is Coming: This is an early access game. I'd liken it to a roguelike western RPG. The art style is 16 bit, top down, kinda like Ultima. As I write this, it occurs to me that it is very singleplayer Elden Ring: Nightreign like in its systems. There is a three day cycle where you run around the map picking up upgrades, then a boss is fought at the end.
I don't normally do early access. I think this game has legs, and as more is added it could be come great. Currently combat is auto-battle... I hope they make it turn based or something. I also hope they add some classes in. In all it's cool, it reminded me of why I don't really do early access. it's cool but barely a game currently.
Unfortunately, I doubt they'll do that... it's pretty much designed around being an auto-battler at the moment, and auto-battle games are pretty popular now, a burgeoning genre of their own, really. I do hope that they add more interesting decisions to be made when it comes to the out-of-battle experience, though, and more exciting possibilities in the battles themselves. More synergies, more surprise upsets, more modifiers, etc...
I know it probably goes against the appeal of an auto-battler for some people, but if you're playing an auto-battler and you can calculate with 100% certainty going into a battle if you're going to win or lose, what's really the point? Critical hits, bonuses with a percentage chance, etc. are nice for making it so you can calculate the minimum guaranteed victory, but still potentially come out of a scrap more on top than you thought, if that makes sense.
I agree that it seemed light on content, but as a proof of concept, it was quite appealing.
I did do a little reading on the game after that post. I kinda bought it on a whim and the art style really hit on some nostalgia for me.
It does seem like auto-battle is a main idea of the game. I think is makes sense to have in the game. The games it seems inspired by were essentially auto-battlers of their era. But a bit more depth would be appreciated.
Oblivion: Remastered
They finally patched out a bug on the XBGP/PC version that was making me rebuild shaders every launch (timed it at about 11 minutes each launch), so I've been much more willing to play. After finishing the Fighters' Guild quest line, I decided I was pretty much done so went to work on the main quest, but keep getting distracted from my goal.
"Oh, a neat portal on a mysterious new island?" oops, ended up doing the entire Shivering Isles DLC (although I did streamline the main quest line of that one).
Now, I've been approached by the Dark Brotherhood (not my fault! the game didn't flag an enemy as such, for some reason) and of COURSE I want that sweet sweet gear, so now I'm on a murdering spree across Cyrodiil. And since I am playing a sneaky archer (because of course I am), I'm thinking maybe I hit up the Thieves' Guild after this...
I was able to pick up a copy of Bravely Default for my 3DS on eBay recently and have been enjoying a classic JRPG on a device I really haven't used in a while. I really enjoy all of the jobs you can play and the store-up-and-unload style of banking turns. Great starter RPG overall for those that can get a copy it or of wait for the Switch remaster later this year.
Also in my arsenal is the original Fire Emblem for Nintendo DS (via Switch online). I never got into the series and saw this one as a basic intro to tactics-like games and Fire Emblem generally that has several sequels. Enjoying it kinda like the original Advanced Wars I remember playing back in the day. Overall, simple intro to this style of game if you hadn't tried it before and I like the consequences of losing units vs just restoring after a battle essentially tying into the story a bit.
In between work on breaks, I went through my yearly playthrough of Super Mario World and noticed I never played through Super Mario World 2 which features Yoshi as the main character ferrying a baby Mario on his journey. While I didn't really like the focus shift away from Mario when I rented it back in the 90s (or Yoshi Story for N64), I have a new opinion of the charm and design choices that came out of this game. It really makes a lot of sense now with each Nintendo mascot was trying to have their own style going forward with Yoshi getting this cute and stylized crayon version for games going forward.
Recently finished Yakuza 0 as my first mainline game with Kiryu as the MC (played Like a Dragon first recently). What a great game, I really got into things as the story unfolded and got comfortable with the more brawler style instead of turn-based that Like a Dragon sported. I'll likely work on Infinite Wealth next and rotate back again later for the other mainlines!
Harvestella is sort of my in-between game right now if I'm limited on playtime. I could never get that deep into farming sims like Stardew Valley, really not preferring the pixel version games lately as charming as they are. It's much more of a brain-turn-off game and has a mix focus of farming, combat, and story on the earlier side while being a 3D game. It's simple though for now, but having the ability to switch jobs mid-combat in order to save time before the end of day timer is deep enough to have me playing it a little bit every day
I've been looking at a lot of Warhammer stuff lately, thinking about getting into it. But for the time being, I picked up Space Marines 2. Only about 45 minutes into the game so not sure how much I can comment on it, but it's definitely not bad.
Not worth getting into Warhammer.
Source: guy who has thousands of dollars in Warhammer, with 4 armies and hundreds of hours played.
It's too expensive,GW is always trying to squeeze its players for more, between FOMO deals and constant rules updates you're obligated to pay for. Plus lots of customer unfriendly practices, such as designing new kits in such a way that you can't kitbash anymore and deleting units entirely from the game (which you've spent lots of money on and lots of time painting). And the game in general just sucks. The rules are dumb and over complicated and the game itself is geared toward competitive players currently, which means everything is getting blander and more homogenized.
If you're in to sci-fi and want to get into wargames, check out stuff like Konflict '47, Battletech, Stargrave or any of the other countless sci-fi wargames options.
I definitely agree in the context of trying to get into playing tabletop 40k, just play Kill Team if you must. Although if we're talking just collecting a few models to paint and admire then that is something that really doesn't feel exploitative to me.
And I definitely think there's a lot of enjoyment to be had from getting into 40k books and video games, the overall setting is superb and 40k is kind of having a golden era of video games right now (and the rumored Total War: 40k will push that into the stratosphere).
@Unsorted definitely check out Darktide if you're slightly interested in the FPS genre, it's a great game and it's in a really good spot right now.
Painting them is definitely fun. I've switched over to primarily World War 2 Wargames and I love painting those, but it doesn't compare to painting my Gloomspite Gitz, which even though I cranked the hell out of them in a few months, were fun as hell to paint and so much fun to go crazy with color.
That said, and obviously this is mostly exclusive to me, but I find the 40k setting itself very boring. I even picked what I thought were the two most interesting factions in Orks and Necrons and I'm still just overall bored with the setting; it just can't ever feel real to me, because it's so big "dark & grim", it feels completely unrealistic to me. Sigmar and Fantasy at least feel like it could be populated by real people and allowed me to enjoy it much more, even actually investing in and enjoying a couple of novels in the setting. 40k just never did it for me, unfortunately.
I still debate selling off my Orks and Necrons, as I don't really think I'll ever play 40k again and looking at all the grey that I don't want to paint, taking up space in my cabinet is just...eh. My wife says I ought to just put them in a box for the time being and leave it at that for awhile.
Going to echo this one. I spent way too much money only to have GW rip out your entire army's function by either nerfing it in a rulebook or releasing a new unit that warps the meta beyond belief.
Play the video games. You get more immersed without the violent assault on the wallet. You often get an army painter with it, so unless you want to physically paint these items yourself, don't bother.
I've never been truly into Warhammer or anything in the Warhammer universe, with one major exception: Blood Bowl. I've played a couple of leagues with friends and it's so much fun (amidst all the frustration). I once nearly won the entire league by playing Dwarves, falling really far behind the other teams in value, and then buying a star player to run plays that Dwarves could never run themselves.
For those that are unaware, it's literal Fantasy Football. A tactics-style football simulator set in the Warhammer Fantasy universe, with everything that entails. It's glorious.
What's your opinion on Age of Sigmar? I've heard rumblings that the rules are a bit better then in 40k, more streamlined.
I'm not quite sure I want to actually play these games, but as of a few months ago I picked up a killteam box to just paint, and I'm having fun with it. If I could actually get some games out of these things I paint, that would be a nice bonus.
Also, how do they delete units? That seems rather intense, why does the community let them do this? Aren't there some kind of accepted rules made by the community to allow these deleted units back in the game?
Deleting stuff ("moving it to Legacy" in GW terms) is basically just them saying they're no longer legitimate for competitive play and will no longer get rules updates. For example, Age of Sigmar (AoS) just released it's 4th edition last year and in one case, one entire army was removed from the game (Beasts of Chaos), so no longer has any rules to play your models with and another had a chainsaw taken to it and a vast majority of its nearly new models completely removed (Stormcast Eternals). So you still have your models, they just won't have rules to go with them, so you may not even be able to play them in a friendly game and no tournament or organized play events will let you participate with those models.
Of course, being a wargame with physical books, you can always play old editions, but that's also up to you being able to find an opponent.
There's also the other underhanded shit, like towards the end of 9th Edition 40k, two years ago, they released several rules rewrites for Armies (called Codex or Codices) and then literally the next month announced 10th Edition was two months out and all Codex are invalidated and useless. So you've just dropped $50-$60 on your army book, which is now a paper weight. And these armies, at this point, had been without updated rules for all of 9th Edition (3 years), so people were doing what they could with outdated rules for their armies (which is sometimes good, sometimes bad.)
As for Age of Sigmar, I do think it's better. I have two fully painted Armies for AoS and did several tournaments, versus my 40k stuff which is all half painted, so that should tell you something. The rules are definitely better and more streamlined, but still have some issues that are just patently unfun (I Go, You Go) and then it all comes with the usual GW nonsense as previously described. But it is better.
Warhammer was my first set of wargames and I did enjoy them for a time. But as I started messing around with other games, I found systems that were much better designed, companies that didn't feel predatory and communities that were much more chill, tighter knit and interested in how I wanted to play (which is to say, "Let's have a friendly game, drink beer and bullshit, making up a little narrative as we go along." You can find that in Warhammer, but it's more rare in my experience. People are more interested in being competitive and getting sweaty about the rules ("You see, I've placed my model exactly 1/2" away from yours, therefore you cannot move to attack it") with Warhammer and that, coupled with feeling like I'm constantly being exploited for my wallet just leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Lastly and I think this is more of a personal issue, but I've heard others complain about it as well: model complexity and size of army required. I have hundreds of Warhammer models and they're often beautiful, but to my mind, they're often too detailed. It sounds weird to say, but when you're painting hundreds of models for a single army, you feel obligated to hit all those little details and make sure you're doing a service to the models themselves. GW makes fantastic models, but when they're so amazing and detailed, they can feel like a massive chore to paint, especially when you're painting 60 of the same one or you have another huge model that just makes sense to largely leave in pieces so you can paint before assembly (looking at you Black Coach and Ghost Ark). My Warhammer models are some of my favorites that I've painted, but I find it more satisfying to have something that feels achievable in a smaller amount of time. For example, painting a real WW2 tank, you can basically do one color, paint a few details, such as tracks and maybe machine guns and call it a day. It'll look good on the table and historically accurate and you feel like you've gotten something done. Or you can go crazy and throw on decals, weathering, rust effects, etc and really try to tell a story with it. It's up to you the level you want to paint to, rather than feeling obligated to invest tens of hours into one piece.
Thanks for the write-up!
As someone who comes from MTG, I do wonder sometimes what's up with the companies who just can't seem to stop actively antagonizing their customer base. Well I know why, it's just somewhat bewildering that it's so consistent in it's shortsighted greed, every single time.
I'll just stick to killteam for now then and not splurge on any of the armies. I was also hoping for Warcry, but I've heard they're silently phasing that out, plus I'm not sure if I can find anyone for that here in Prague. Perhaps it's worth looking into Underworlds too. I don't have to care about updated competitive rules in that one if I just get it on the table with some friends occasionally.
I like the idea of looking into the other tabletop games, but so far nothing has quite grabbed my attention. Some are overly sexualised and cringe, some are just plain ugly, and of the others I don't quite like the themes. But it seems to be a pretty big space so I'm sure I've missed out on a lot.
Kill Team is definitely not bad, I enjoyed what little I played of it, but it didn't ultimately stick with me for whatever reason. I just recently sold my books and my models I had for it. I did like Warcry a bit more, because it has the list building aspect of the bigger games, but yeah, I'm not entirely sure where it's at right now.
You can also checkout One Page Rules. It's something I've been meaning to do for awhile now, as it's Warhammer but simplified without all the nonsense and is one reason I hang on to my models. I've heard lots of good things, just haven't made the jump because I have a few other games I love and haven't wanted to migrate yet.
And as for the greed, I dunno, captive audience I guess. Once things grow to a certain level, people seem to assume it's the only game in town and it does end up generally being the only thing people play, so you go where the players are.
The one thing I've discovered though is that games tend to be more regional. Warhammer is big everywhere, but I do know there's a reasonable Battletech scene in my area, evidenced by what I've seen at Cons here, as well as the growing selection of BT and related at my FLGS. About an hour south of me, in the next big city, my favorite game Bolt Action has a pretty sizeable (like 10-15 guys) group, who regularly come up my way for the conventions. So it might be worth researching and calling other stores in reasonable proximity to see what's popular.
Honestly, a large part of it is simply what's played around me. Like 99% of everything is WH. The other 1% seems to be split between MCP, Warmachine, Star Wars, and Infinity. I've looked at other wargames, and there are others that I'd be interested in trying, but I can't find anyone looking for others to play them in my area (not to mention having structured/dedicated times at LGS).
Your comment did make me do a bit of searching and I came across Black Seas and Oak & Iron. I'd love to play either of those but I don't see anyone around playing those.
Definitely. I'm blessed enough to have a group of friends that will generally give anything a try and one friend in particular that shares my love for wargames in general and WW2 specifically, so we play a lot of Bolt Action, but have experimented with many others as well.
As far as finding people to play, one piece of advice I've heard from various YouTubers is to get enough models for any given game that you could run a complete game with opposing factions. Then you can invite people to try it out with you via a flyer at your FLGS or via Internet groups. People are more willing to give something a go if you can explain the rules to them and have everything you need to play a game, so they don't have any investment but their time.
Edit: I should also say, re Black Seas: I haven't played it, but I'm generally happy with Warlord as a company. Their models are generally fairly priced, they're fine with 3d prints and they're very supportive of their community of gamers. I have several of their games, my favorite being Bolt Action. They don't constantly hit you with rule changes and the need to buy new books; having only recently updated Bolt Action to 3rd edition after about 9 years of 2nd.
You're playing with a gamepad, right? Just checking, because I want you to enjoy the game. That game is basically unplayable with keyboard and mouse.
I've been playing with keyboard & mouse. I think I get why you'd say it's unplayable, some of the keybinds are definitely odd. But I think I've mostly gotten used to it by now.
Still playing The Hundred Line: Last Defence Academy. I'm on day 94 of the initial playthrough.
There's not a lot I can say about the plot without spoilers, so I'll just say that while I don't think it's quite as good as Danganronpa so far, it's still a lot of fun. Despite the game taking place over 100 days, I don't feel like there's been any point in the story where it really dragged or I wasn't being entertained.
If you are one of those people who hate 'anime grunts', this game will drive you nuts because every single unvoiced line has some kind of vocalisation. Even as someone who watches a ton of anime, I thought this was a bit much.
The combat definitely feels like the weakest part of the game. It's not difficult (at least on normal mode), but it never gets to the point where it feels particularly good to play and I find myself kind of dreading it as a chore to clear before getting back to the story. In general, you're either:
clearing out waves of trashmobs, which is easy to do by just focusing on killing all the guys who give you +1 action points on the first turn and mopping up everyone else in the next turn; or
fighting a boss, which you can usually just cheese by using items to move your damage dealers next to the boss in the first turn and then spamming your highest damage moves and special attacks.
Despite nominally being a game about defending, pretty much every mission revolves around killing stuff, so there's little incentive to use characters who are focused around defending / support / debuffs because:
each wave is over really quickly if you just use the guys who have strong damage output / big AOE attacks; and
ending your turn often brings enemy reinforcements, so you're effectively punished for playing slowly and methodically. Even worse, on some maps, there's no indication of where the reinforcements are going to come from, so you can get a situation where the reinforcements walk in out of nowhere and hit your characters, which feels pretty unfair.
Anyhow, looking forward to getting to the first ending and seeing how the ending / branching system works. All I can say at this point is that there are a ton of mysteries which look like they won't be answered in this first playthrough...
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
As a sequel to my post in last week's thread, I would like to just provide a progress update. I'm just gonna put the rest of the post in a spoiler section from here onward.
Progression & bosses:
I've since visited every area pretty extensively except the final one that I know exists due to having seen a speedrun of the game at GDQ this year, and killed several bosses that weren't dead as of my last post, memory-tier ones being Genichiro, Lady Butterfly, Folding Screen Monkeys, Guardian Ape, and Corrupted Monk. I've found my way back to the besieged Ashina Castle and am working on Great Shinobi - Owl.
Despite all this progress, my actual ability level hasn't gotten a whole lot better, I'm still reacting very poorly to perilous attacks. Particularly against Lady Butterfly and O'Rin I would consistently miss jumping the sweep attack into jumping on the boss' head because I still have a very difficulty time not tilting the left stick while using defensive options like mikiri counter and jumping sweeps, so what would often happen is I would jump the sweep backward, and then in frustration just jump again toward the boss and on their head anyway, which feels like it shouldn't work at random like that (and sometimes doesn't if they swing again) but in both my Lady Butterfly and O'Rin kills I did not get punished for re-jumping to jump on the boss anyway, and in both cases gained some progress on their posture meter. Feels a bit cheesy, I'm not doing the clean successful version of the manoeuvre because my reaction times are still so bad, but I'm kinda "stealing" the reward away from it anyway. A big punish for not being clean at this is surely coming in a future fight so I expect to not keep getting away with it.
Great Shinobi - Owl is a massive step up from Genichiro, Corrupted Monk, or Guardian Ape. Owl's actually quite a weird boss because just visually observing him, he's not super fast, but somehow he still feels like he really prevents me from getting hits in like a fast boss would, idk what it is. It seems like 1 dodge isn't enough to get out of his item cloud if he throws it while I'm close and infront of him, but 2 dodges or 1 dodge-sprint tends to take too long to hit his vitality and he gets his guard up. I'd quite like to be hitting his vitality there so he'll stop resetting posture meter to zero, but I've written off any notion of punishing this move at all, instead dodging out and waiting for him to do his next choice of move.
This one might be the classic like 200+ death skill check wall of this game for me.
Will report back next thread or maybe in the replies.
Update: I beat the game including all optional bosses such as DoH and others. Despite saying "This one might be the classic 200+ death wall" about the boss I was on in the last message, no boss in the game actually took me that many. I doubt I fought anyone more than 20 times maximum, though some wins felt more lucky than decisive.
Not had much time with work but got an half hour to beat s.p.l.i.t. Its from the creator of Shotgun Roulette. This is a keyboard only, terminal/vim style horror game where your team uses legacy firmware, social engineering and inside information to pull off a cyberpunk "heist". This dev has a little running series of short games set in this world but it's a standalone experience.
Even though it's short and low-poly, I have to put up major trigger warnings for self harm. It's also a pretty chill vibe for most of it, until a moment where you see a few lines of text and there is just an overwhelming sense of dread that carries through to the end.
The amount of details and tools at your disposal had me set for a significantly longer playtime with more complex puzzles. I can imagine a series of escalations that gradually ramp up the tension and paranoia. Felt like I was onlt scratching the surface before it just ends.
I suspect that there's an arg attached here and this game is a tutorial to navigate some web terminal. They make a point of highlighting the discord and I think there was a similar thing for his last game. But I really don't have the time to keep up with a dedicated community like that
. Much prefer the Blue Prince style having every layer of discovery and lore accessible within the game.
Overall, it's fun for the few minutes you have with it. Not free but dirt cheap and it makes for a unique experience. And I still have a lot of fun with 4p Shotgun Roulette so no issue supporting the dev.
I'm on my second play through of Starfield, and previously I had defended it to the death, but this time I see the cracks starting to show through. The first go-round I was blinded by the amazing story and amazing number of places you could go.
However, this time, I can't help but feel that the various disparate systems in the game do not in fact make a whole game. The ship builder is unbelievably broken even after all this time. The reasons for building a base are essentially zip. The actual quests are great, but ultimately it feels like an empty universe. I'm gonna still finish this play through, but not ever come back to it again. On the first play through I was so hooked on the main quest that any annoyances I encountered, I just tucked them away. This time I can't seem to ignore them.
I completely understand why people don't love this game.
I don't love Starfield, but I don't hate it either. I enjoyed my 85 hours with it and wouldn't mind playing some more; it basically felt like a Bethesda game for me and I was happy with that. I don't personally get the love or the hate for it.
So I bought Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor a couple days ago mistaking it for Rogue Core. I haven't been following the games for a while so I saw a DRG game on sale and thought Rogue Core was released or something.
I originally wasn't interesting in Survivor because from screenshots it looked like a cheap mobile gamified version of DRG.
Well, thank god this game isn't pay to play because now I'm addicted. Played it way past my bedtime last night.
I'm still trying to figure out if it's actually good or not, but all I know is that it scratches an itch and I'm being entertained.
I have been playing Dead Cells, it's a rogue-like side-scroller. I played it a bit a few years ago, but never got too far. I love it, but I caught myself becoming too obsessed with it, so I stopped playing a few days ago. Moderation is hard for me and since it's a rogue-like, my tendency is to do "just one more run" in hopes I get farther.
I'd recommend this game for any rogue-like fan, though. So fun, with tons of items and combinations for your strategy each run. Plus, having been released a while back, it has a few DLCs that add several additional levels (biomes), so the runs feel less repetitive (more choice which route to take, which bosses to fight along the way). Great game!
I had played like 40 hours of Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate since the expansion came out, but I had a singular moment on Saturday where I was like "yeah, I'm done" even though I had just played 5 hours on Friday and enjoyed it. I don't really know what happened, but I guess burnout caught up to me all at once. It doesn't help that half the reason that game is fun is because of the normally excellent community, but the community went from excellent to toxic over the last few months and it's just a pain to interact with now. I think many people ended up leaving or taking a break after Final Shape, so the ratio of addicted shitters who don't have anything positive to contribute just grew over the last year. So I'm trying to take some time off from the game and not get collected by FOMO considering the event in the game this week seems cool (Arms Week), but ultimately isn't something I need to do, and that's how those games get you, right?
So anyways, I started playing a game known for never being addicting, WoW Classic... Really though, I've played WoW on and off for a very long time and with the 20th anniversary servers being in vanilla right now and moving to Burning Crusade later this year, I thought this might be a good time for me to hop back in, since I'm in an MMO mood right now. We'll see if I end up sticking with it or not. I've been romanticizing WoW raiding to myself since Destiny raiding is my favorite activity in any game, but I obviously need a break from that game. Realistically I never actually make it to max level to raid in WoW, but I would like to get back into it if I happen to enjoy the game again and keep playing.
I'm still plugging away on Expedition 33. It's wonderful and I love it, but I seem to be consuming it in chunks rather than going straight through. I'll get through it in the next few weeks, but it's such a great experience so far.
Lastly, I've been hitting the iRacing grind. I wanted to focus more on racing this year, so now in addition to doing my weekly league race, I've also been doing 2-3 official races a week to get better. I've mostly been doing asphalt oval. Sports car racing is still my true love, but I've been really enjoying oval and want to improve there. I have plans to be racing more IRL in the coming years (I'm closing on a house soon, which means I'll have a garage and my own shop in which to keep a race car), so I want to get as much time in iRacing as possible to get myself back into the swing of things for if I do try to make some sports car racing happen IRL.
Kingdom: New Lands
This week we played the 2D side scrolling tower defense game Kingdom New Lands for our podcast on roguelike games.
Overall I think it’s a reasonably nice and cozy game that has a deceptive amount of strategic decision making to it for a game that has one action button: use coin on object.
The art is great, the sound design is great, but I almost think the constrained gameplay design hinders a lot of strategy. At times it feels like Starcraft if you couldn’t control your units behavior.
The fact that there isn’t really any text or notification or tutorial or anything means you have to learn by failure. I think a mark of true quality for a rogue game is if failure is at least fun in some way, but failing a run here feels bad at least half the time. Individual island runs take so long that if you soft lock yourself in economy, then failure feels like this slow strangulation until you hit the reset button manually.
The game is also frustratingly slow to me. The horse stamina is a system that I wish I could upgrade faster, as it’s really annoying to go from one end of the map to the other and having your horse object to going faster most of the time.
I'm really glad I picked up Kingdom: Two Crowns. Initially I just wanted to try Kingdom 2-player, but even single player it's really a better designed game. Your archers are a bit smarter about defending the outer towers and retreating when needed. You unlock new mounts that either go faster or have combat helper abilities. And there's a few new ways to earn coin even in winter.
Overall it pretty much fixes all the annoyances I had with the original Kingdom.
I’ve been intrigued to try Two Crowns since the podcast episode. It’s certainly a mega hit popularity-wise, and I can totally see how the coop communication and strategy aspects really mesh well with the two sides of the kingdom.
Jason Schreier randomly mentioned Nurikabe World on Bluesky, so I checked it out on a lark and it hasn't taken over my life! Nurikabe is apparently already its own thing that I just hadn't heard of before. Nurikabe World is that puzzle game wrapped up in a beautiful package. It has lovely visuals and chill music. I was playing and suddenly realized I was up too late and needed to go to bed. It was the first time in years a game did that to me.
Naturally I started to look for more sources like on mobile, but they just are not as good or soothing as Nurikabe world. Send help.
Late to the party, but I just finished Ghost of Tsushima. TL;DR: Worth playing, but I have some gripes.
Spoilers inside
I was pretty disappointed with the story. The beginning of the game makes it extremely clear that stealth kills, assassinations, etc. are against the samurai code, so I avoided using them as much as possible. But then the game forced me to do those things in certain spots, and then Shimura would chew me out for it. By the end of the game, I was very much on Shimura's side and tried to give myself up/not fight back at the very end, but even that gives you a fail state and just restarts the fight.
I was also kinda annoyed by the gameplay. It doesn't feel like I'm using a sword when you have to slash someone five times across the face to take them down. I did like that the game's blocking and dodging mechanics don't give you magical invincibility frames (or at least not to the extent of other games). My issue is that this never seemed to apply the other way when I would attack enemies. I could be 80% if the way into my follow through on a heavy attack, but if the enemy just barely managed to poke my toe with his sword, that completely knocks me back and cancels all momentum my attack had.
And then by the end, I was just getting standard open-world fatigue. Foxes got boring after the 30th one. Riding or walking and talking sequences with NPCs that could have just been a cutscene. Go 400 meters to the mission start point just to end up doubling back 300 meters along the same road at the start of the mission. I was annoyed when I'd encounter Mongols on the road, and it seemed like the game deliberately spawned them in the way when you were traveling to a destination. Like, I could never just go from A to B without being interrupted two or three times. It got to the point that I would fast travel just to avoid random encounters on the road.
The lethal difficulty setting should increase lethality both ways. You die in one or two hits, but so do they.
I've been playing Taiji. Not much to say about this one. Imagine you blended The Witness together with the grid puzzles from Islands of Insight and stomped it flat until it was a 2D (3/4 perspective) game, best played with the keyboard and mouse. There's plenty of what appears to be deliberate nods to The Witness in the game world and mechanics. It's gameplay-oriented like The Witness, and fun enough to play through if you like solving puzzles. I would say it does a less good job at teaching you the various mechanics (though it does teach you); a couple of the mechanics are somewhat difficult to understand; and for the most part it's missing the whole exploration/secrets component (at least so far).
Previous
League of Legends:
Been experimenting with off-meta support picks. Unfortunately, the low elo community on EUW is one of the most toxic, entitled and infuriating aspects of playing this game. People will literally throw their toys out the pram if you do not take meta picks.
My last two games as tank Veigar Support landed me with scores of 9/1/29 (barely a win because I struggled to solo-carry that game), and 5/1/16 (loss.) The latter was a lost cause because the ADC decided to be a toxic jackass, flame in chat, then started not participating in any teamfights and running it the fuck down lane repeatedly.
At this rate I am thinking of actually paying for a transfer to leave the EU West server and either play on EUNE or NA. The quality of games in this region is shit now.
NGU Idle:
After spending nearly a month doing a long-rebirth, I took down Amalgamate v1 (Titan 12) and maxed out the Nether Regions gear set. What I unlocked was the final ingredient for the Cooking feature, which just gave me even more buttons to press for a tiny daily EXP boost, and the ability to max out blood ritual gains. This is the point where the developer just got really lazy with adding the final stretch of the game and it shows. Over half of the enemies in this game don't even have flavor text in the bestiary, with just a "To be added in a future patch" placeholder. Then compared to how impactful features like Macguffin Fragments, Wandoos 98, Yggdrasil, Questing, Hacks, Wishes and Cards have been, Cooking just downright sucks.
I've been loosely following Sayo's NGU Idle guide on clearing the game.
Next plans are to:
Legend of Mushroom:
Not much to say about this one, but the leader of the family (basically in-game clan) I was in quit and promoted me to leader out of the blue. I am going to figure out how to get FireRed into a top competitive spot.